


body language (think we’re overthinking it)

by distractionpie



Series: (I didn't) just come here to dance [2]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Friends With Benefits, Friends With Benefits To Lovers, M/M, Movie Nights, Other, Slow burn with sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-11-29 01:19:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 35,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11430183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie
Summary: It’s easy enough for Joe to decide there’s no harm in repeating a good one night stand a second time. Or a third. But after a few dozen times it’s hard to deny that Webster has got under her skin and she’s falling fast.But what is she supposed to do when the girl she wants everything with only wants one thing from her?





	1. Spring

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to all of the people who supported part one back when I had no idea what it was going to turn itself into.

Joe wakes up with hair in her mouth despite the fact that her own hasn't been long enough for that to be possible since she was nine and made her mother cry by hacking off her pigtails with stolen kitchen scissors. She'd felt guilty about her mother's tears, but never regretted it, and even her mom had come around eventually to the idea that shorter hair suited Joe better.

She spits the hair out and assesses the situation — she's laying top of her sheets, half dressed and in desperate need of a shower.

And Davina Webster is laid beside her in equal disarray, her face tucked into Joe's neck, an arm slung over her and her long legs tangled with Joe's.

Jesus christ, but this is more than Joe is prepared to cope with before coffee.

She tries to slide off of the bed, but Webster's arm tightens around Joe's waist as she mumbles something incoherent against Joe's throat. Her breath tickles and Joe can't help but jerk, and the sudden movement makes Webster stir which is the opposite of what Joe wants when she hasn’t had time to process the situation and work out what her own reaction to all of this is.

It’s too late though. Webster shifts away, and Joe can see the smudged makeup around her eyes that smears further as she rubs at them and her jaw clicks as she yawns and opens her eyes.

Then she freezes. "Joe." Those blue eyes go from sleepy to wide and startled in an instant as she tries to roll away from Joe but the twin bed is only narrow so she just crashes into the wall.

"Webster," Joe acknowledges, for lack of any better options as she takes advantage of being free of Webster's arms to leave the bed and try to straighten herself up a little. Webster had been in too much of a hurry to do a very thorough job of undressing Joe last night, a fact that Joe is grateful for now since she's at least semi-decent.

Webster is fumbling with her bra, which had been discarded among the sheets the previous night, and Joe crosses the room to retrieve the blouse that had been so hastily abandoned the night before. She offers it up to Webster who snatches it from her hands with a muttered, "Thanks," as she stands up.

Even with Web's bra back on Joe can see the impressive array of bite marks she's scattered across Webster's chest, reds and purples blossoming even darker than they had been in the immediate aftermath. Making them was a good memory, but the way Web looks now is tainting it for her as Web fumbles with the buttons of her blouse in her haste to cover the marks up, cursing where one button is missing, torn off in Joe's haste.

Joe's stomach twists. God, this is beyond awkward, but Joe has always made it a point of pride to own her hook-ups and Webster's obvious shame sits ill with her. Though they're residents of the same dorm and share plenty of mutual friends they've never been close to each other, so Joe doesn't know what sort of people Webster usually hooks-up with but she imagines they aren't much like her. Still, there's nothing so wrong with Joe that it would justify this almost horrified reaction from Web - goddammit Webster had kissed her first. "You aren't going to be weird about this, are you?" Joe blurts out.

Web looks up from redressing to blink innocently at Joe. "Weird?" she asks, and the fact she feels the need for an explanation answers Joe's question all on its own.

"You're not going to make a big thing of it," Joe clarifies, "Or make things awkward with our friends."

"No," Webster says firmly, grabbing her blazer. "And neither are you. It was just sex... I got carried away. Apparently philosophical dramas make me act like a desperate idiot," Webster says, the last part so quiet Joe almost doesn't hear and startlingly bitter, sounding almost like she's scolding herself.

"What?” They’d probably both gotten a little carried away last night, but that was hardly a bad thing when they were both had a good time. But hell, from the dark look on Webster's face maybe this isn't about Joe at all, maybe it's the fact sex happened at all that's got Webster so wound up, though she'd seemed comfortable enough with it last night. It wouldn’t shock Joe if Webster was given to prudishness, given her general need for everything to be proper.

Webster looks like she didn't expect Joe to hear her words, cheeks darkening as she shakes her head. "I... I really should go," she looks like she's on the verge of not just fleeing the room, but possibly the whole damn campus.

"Alright," Joe says, and then, half because she can't stand the awkwardness and half on a whim, she adds, "But I don’t care what you said, that film last night is just the first of my English class’ shitty reading list, and I maintain if that set the tone then this semester is going to be hell."

Webster's eyes flash with anger, all discomfort forgotten in the face of a slight against her precious books. It's kind of funny really. "It's a classic!" she says, voice suddenly full of all the fire of the previous evening’s argument, "And watching the movie is no substitute for reading the book, anyway."

"Ha! My professor says we should watch the movies because it shows how the books are interpreted," Joe crows back. She’s not conceding their argument just because Webster is a surprisingly good fuck.

"As well as reading, not instead of, surely?" Webster exclaims, and her hair and makeup is still a mess and there's still a button missing on her blouse, but she looks so much more like herself, odd moodiness giving way to a more predictable sort of frustration.

“We’re reading  _ excerpts  _ ,” Joe says, and fights a laugh at the way Webster’s lip curls in disdain. The class is on adaptational works, not plain literature, but she’s not going to admit that when Webster is so much fun to wind up.

“Well I don’t see the point in that,” Webster says, sounding downright petulant. “I’m shocked the college even lets a course like that run. How are you going to get anything out of the texts if you take them out of context of the whole story. Even watching the movie versions is better than just reading parts…”

“So you are condoning watching the movie versions then?”

Webster grimaces. “Only as the lesser of two evils.” Because of course, being unfaithful to literature would be evil in Web’s book.

Still, it gives Joe an idea. "Hey, so, if I get you a list of all the shitty pretentious books my English class is reading and can you see which ones were made into boring movies and show them to me? That way I can get out of reading the excerpts."

“I’m not helping you get out of work,” Webster says with an eyeroll. She’s not entirely gullible it seems, but Joe isn’t done yet.

“So you’d leave me stuck with incomplete literature?” she asks, mock scandalized. This might actually work for getting her out of reading the assigned texts if she just nudges Webster right.

“Like you care,” Webster huffs. “If you actually wanted to know more you could read the whole books yourself, not settle for knock offs.”

Joe pulls a face. “Like I have time for that. I’m only even in this class because I didn’t do enough English credit earlier and it was the only thing that would fit around my important classes. I barely have time for everything as it is.”

Webster bites her lip. “I suppose the film versions would at least provide some context for the excerpts,” she says slowly, but Joe can tell she’s been convinced. “But they’re hardly reliable.”

“Yeah but you like that shit, you know what the best versions are, right?” Joe asks. “Although I’m guessing you think best means most book like and not least boring.”

And Webster kind of smiles at that, says, “They aren’t boring,” and “Different versions have different merits, but if you… if you send me a copy of your reading list I suppose I can at least steer you away from the terrible animated Shakespeare.”

Victory, Joe thinks. And because her momma raised her right she adds, “Thanks Web.”

Webster nods and tucks a curl of hair behind her ear.

“I… I should go. Before people start getting up for breakfast and…”

And realise that Webster spent the night with Joe, which Webster apparently thinks is horribly embarrassing. Right. “Okay, well, see you around.”

***

Over the next few days Joe doesn’t try to put what happened out of her mind per se —  it’s too enjoyable of a memory for that —  but to put it to one side, and it’s not until a week later when she’s looking over her reading list when she remembers her suggestion to Webster. It was mostly an idle comment, a way to diffuse the tension between them, make what happened that night about a disagreement over a movie and not about sex.

But it seems wrong not to follow through on her part after she’d said she would send it. Let her send the list to Webster, for Webster to politely acknowledge or flat out ignore, and then they could both be too busy to follow through, walk away with everybody’s pride intact.

So she copies and pastes the list into a message titled only ‘movies?’ and sends it off, ready to wash her hands of the whole incident.

Three hours later her phone pings with a notification of an incoming message from d.k.webster@toccoacol.edu.

It’s Joe’s own email forwarded back to her, with notes alongside each item on the list noting what film adaptations existed and, whether Webster had access to a copy.

More than half of the titles are marked to say that Web knows how to get hold of them in movie format, including the next book on Joe’s course schedule. Joe doesn’t really believe in signs, but this feels like one.

She waits twenty minutes and then emails Web back, just the name of the next film in her course guide and ‘— Friday.’.

There’s no response, and she puts it out of her mind.

***

Joe is wearing a hoodie and sweats and fucking around on buzzfeed when there’s a soft knock on her door – she almost doesn’t hear it over the music she has playing. She glances at the clock. It’s half past eight on a Friday night, and she’s not expecting anyone. And when her friends turn up at her room uninvited it tends to involve them letting themselves in or a lot more banging on the door and yelling.

She hauls herself up off the bed, scrubbing a hand through her hair before she opens the door.

It’s Webster.

She’s wearing a form fitting purple dress with a floaty skirt and a loose cream cardigan, a little light for heading out in January, she must be getting a ride from someone to whatever dinner party she’s going to that’s got her all dressed up like that. Joe is comfy in her sweats, they’re perfectly reasonable clothes for slouching about in her room on a Friday night, but suddenly she feels a little self-conscious about them anyway.

“Webster.”

Web smiles awkwardly. “Sorry, I didn’t realise until just this evening that you hadn’t said a time in your message so I figured I’d just drop by… but if you’re busy now I can wait.”

Joe stares at her, perplexed, until she spots the DVD case Webster is holding in one perfectly manicured hand. Oh.

“Oh. You’re here about the movie,” she says. Shit. “It totally slipped my mind.” Or rather, she hadn’t really expected Webster to show up.

“Oh. Well, I’ll just-” Webster takes a step back from the door and Joe shakes her head. This was supposed to make sure that things weren’t awkward between them and she’ll follow through on that even if it’s not going as expected.

“No, come in,” Joe says, “If you don’t, I’m only going to have to come borrow it from you over the weekend so I’ve seen it in time for class on Monday.”

Webster laughs softly. “Okay, if you’re sure.”

Joe performs a quick five second spot check of her room, looking for anything that might need hastily removing from sight, but other than the usual mess it seems she’s in the clear, so she steps back to let Webster in.

There’s a voice in her head that sounds a lot like her mother says that she at least ought to straighten her sheets, but she ignores it – after all, Webster had no problems with Joe’s unmade bed last time. And if she has any objections this time she doesn’t voice them, although the way she perches delicately on the very edge of the mattress says a lot all on its own.

Joe takes the DVD from Webster, slipping it into the disc drive before she remembers a problem. “I… hang-on, sorry, my laptop speakers are glitchy as hell,” she passes the laptop to Webster, crossing the room to rummage through her desk drawer for several moments before triumphantly uncovering her spare headphones and splitter. She gets everything plugged in, handing one pair of earbuds to Webster before she settles onto the bed beside her.

Joe finds herself holding herself as stiffly as Webster is as she places the laptop across their knees. The movie starts to play, C-list actors in ugly period costumes parading across the scene and declaiming in a version of English she barely understands and she tries to focus on the movie but it quickly becomes clear that Joe is going to have to keep Webster’s DVD or do the reading because she’s barely aware of anything that’s happening on screen, not when they’re sitting so close to stop the headphones pulling loose, Webster’s thigh pressed warm against Joe’s own and like last time they were in this bed, and the last time they were this close is a distracting memory. As the movie plays on Webster starts to relax against Joe’s side, and then even if what was happening on screen wasn’t boring as hell it wouldn’t provide adequate distraction from the scent of her perfume and the way a few strands of her hair fall onto Joe’s shoulders, just as soft there as it felt beneath her fingers and against her thighs, Joe’s pulse picking up at the sense memory.

She’s shocked when the screen finally goes black, and in the moment of frozen silence before the credits start to play Joe decides that the movie must have been a short running one because there is no way that nearly two hours have passed, but when she moves her cursor to exit out of the film the timestamp in the corner of the screen shows 2:14:03.

Joe shifts to move the laptop and Webster’s makes a small unhappy noise. “Oh, don’t tell me you want to actually watch the credits?” Joe starts, turning towards Webster, “That’s—”

She loses the end of her sentence to the realisation that Webster’s face is mere inches from her own, close enough that Joe can see where her mascara has clumped a little on one side, the way her eyes really are the impossible shade of blue they appear from a distance, the fractional part of her lips, those clever lips that Joe hasn’t been able to get out of her head for the last two hours and Joe wonders if this was what Webster was feeling in the moment on the stairs, the inexplicable but irresistible impulse to touch. If it is she understands now why Webster kissed her no matter how much she’d seemed to regret it later, because though Joe suspects that this time she’ll be the one coming away with regrets she can’t help but close the distance between them.

For a few awful seconds after their lips touch, Joe wonders if this has all been a mistake. It certainly hasn’t been the solution to the awkwardness between them that she’d hoped for – she had after all agreed to the movie night in some attempt to re-establish normality between them and now she’s throwing that out of the window. Then Webster finally moves, and it’s not to pull away but to push Joe down onto the mattress and press up against her, and the laptop falls from their knees and hits the carpet with a dull thud, but Joe’s dropped it from greater heights without lasting harm done and she can’t bring herself to worry about it when Webster is pressing her back against the sheets, hands slipping under Joe’s shirt.

When she tugs at the front of Webster’s dress, neckline stretching downward, she reveals a faint mottling of the skin, patches of red and violet where Joe had left the deepest marks last time they were together, and she feels strangely proud that the marks have lasted – there’s a bitter satisfaction in knowing that however eagerly Webster had left she couldn’t have avoided the same lingering memories which have plagued Joe. She nips at the marks, driven to make them stick a little longer.

She wants the first taste this time and she gets it, Webster clawing at the sheets and turning Joe’s name to both sin and prayer as she gasps it out and then she proves her skills the last time she was in Joe’s bed were more than just a fluke before rolling them both over the returning the favour.

This time Webster isn’t so languid afterwards. She’s too alert for whatever sleepy impulse had mimicked affection last time, she breathes heavily against Joe’s side for a few minutes as they both soak up the haze of endorphins, but instead of curling closer she sits up, finger combing her hair back into place.

“I should get back,” she says, as she makes something like order out of her clothes. It’s better this way, Joe reasons as she watches Web leave, she gets her bed to herself and there’s no awkward morning after but there’s still something draining about the haste and ease with which Webster extricates herself.

It takes her a long time to fall asleep that night.

***

Upon receiving another email letting her know that Webster has the next movie on her list, but making no reference to what else had passed between them, Joe doesn’t know what to think. But when Webster turns up the next Friday clutching another DVD, her body floods with heat in anticipation of sex, and it seems her body is a better judge of the situation than her mind, because they’re both out of their clothes before the credits have even finished playing and Joe decides that she doesn’t really care what labels could be put on these encounters just so long as Webster doesn’t take her hands off her.

It's after their fourth movie night, on Skinny's birthday, that Joe is reminded that as good of a fuck as Webster might be, she's also kind of a bitch.

Joe’s not stupid, she knows the fucking doesn’t make them best friends, but she’d expected some basic courtesy. Instead, when she mentioned watching the movies for her class, Webster goes pale and hastily corrects her to claim that Webster has only been lending her copies, no hint that Webster has been joining her and certainly not staying in her bed when the movies are done. It sits sour in Joe’s gut, the obvious embarrassment Webster so evidently feels at the thought of people knowing that they fool around. It’s not even like it’s a question of Webster being worried about what her friends might think of Joe, most of them are Joe’s friends too.

After that snub she's not expecting Webster to email her about a movie again, but she does. Joe accepts mostly for the chance to let Webster know what Joe thought of being treated like she was good enough for a fuck on Friday night but not worth even being friendly with in public on Saturday and she’s spoiling for a fight when Webster turns up at her door.

It must show on her face because instead of saying hello, Webster grimaces and says, “I… I was rude the other night, wasn’t I?”

Joe raises her eyebrows at the uncertainty. “I don’t know, were you?”

Webster slides her hands into her pockets. She’s wearing jeans for once instead of a skirt or a dress, the dark denim hugging the length of her legs as she fidgets. “I was. I shouldn’t have lied, it’s just that… well Skinny and Donna have this idea that I…” Webster shakes her head. “I don’t want to make myself someone for people to gossip about, you understand?”

Joe understands, alright. Webster’s good girl reputation is more important to her than honesty or manners or the careful truce that Joe had thought they were building. She’s tempted to slam the door in Webster’s face. She could get her own copy of this week’s movie, or she could just not watch it at all, but then Webster says something Joe could never have foreseen.

“I’m sorry.”

The words are so fast they almost blur into one, and Webster studiously avoids Joe’s gaze as soon as she’s said them, but Joe hadn’t expected to hear them at all.

“Oh yeah?”

“I don’t want everybody knowing, but this thing with us…” Webster says, “This is good.”

Joe makes a bad decision.

“Prove it,” she blurts out, grabbing Webster by the shirt and pulling her through the door, slamming it behind them.

And prove it Webster does.

An indeterminable amount of time later they lie sweaty and dishevelled across Joe’s sheets. There’s no room to sprawl so they’re tangled together as Joe soaks up the fading endorphins.

Webster sits up, but instead of getting out of the bed and redressing as she always has, she glances over at the DVD case laying where she’d dropped on the floor, to be joined by most of their clothing as well as one of Joe’s pillows and the lamp they’d inadvertently knocked off the nightstand. “Um…”

Joe follows her gaze and sighs. She’s more in the mood for a second round or sleep than studying, but she could also really use a decent grade in this class. “I’ll start up my laptop.”

It feels strange to climb back into bed with Webster, and at first Joe finds herself sitting stiffly but as the movie plays on she relaxes, curling into Webster like this is natural for them. It occurs to her that this is the first opportunity she's had to take a good look at Web, free from the distracting urgency of sex or the hyper-self-conscious awkwardness of that first morning after. Where Joe is lean, all jutting bones and wiry muscles, Web is made up of curves, her thick thighs and broad hips easing gently to the tuck of her waist and soft belly, then the prominent swell of her breasts. She makes a better sight than anything on screen and, “This is the most boring film yet,” Joe comments, halfway through.

“It’s got important cultural merit,” Webster says, then betrays herself by yawning and Joe can’t help but laugh.

“You’re so full of shit,” she accuses. “Nobody could like  _ all  _ the garbage we’ve been assigned.”

“I don’t have to like it to respect its place in artistic and literary canon.”

Joe pauses, cranes her head until she can look Webster in the eye. “Wait, are you saying even  _ you  _ don’t like this?”

Webster hesitates and her expression gives her away. She wants to like it, Joe can see, wants to defend it because it’s the sort of thing somebody like Webster  _ should  _ like, but the look in her eyes as she says, “It’s… not a great example of the genre…” is the exact same bored frustration that Joe is feeling.

“Oh well fuck this then if we’re both bored,” Joe says, twisting until her mouth comes into contact with Webster’s neck.

“You need to watch this for class,” Webster argues, but she doesn’t sound particularly invested. She doesn’t stop Joe from kissing her either.

“Just tell me what happens,” Joe suggests, and here’s where Webster ought to try and argue that it’s cheating or that she doesn’t owe Joe any assistance but Joe’s already sliding down her body with a thorough distraction in mind.

“Not much,” Webster says, “It lacks any sort of narrative thrust…”

“Ooohhh yeah, say thrust again,” Joe jokes, and Webster slaps her shoulder which she’s willing to accept she was probably asking for.

Joe doesn’t really listen to any of Web’s explanations after that, but she does listen the rise and fall of her voice in time with Joe’s touches and the way she starts to trip over her words and repeat herself whenever Joe moves her fingers and her mouth just right. She knows it’s just biology, but there’s something thrilling to her ego in how quickly Webster gets wet and pliant under her touch, knowing that she has the power to take Webster apart so easy and that Web lets her.

By the time she’s done Webster has long since given up on explaining, but she starts up again as she pulls Joe up the bed and half into her lap. They move together seamlessly, and Joe embraces her natural reactions, just going with her instincts until Webster grabs her arm, guides Joe’s hand to her hair and for a moment Joe is confused, but then she remembers that first time and the noises Web had made when Joe pulled her hair, so she curls her fingers in among the strands and tugs, perhaps a little too rough but Webster gives a pleased little hum.

And oh, she realises, as she pulls a little harder and Webster’s hum breaks into a whine, that’s a  _ thing  _ . Something that she can make thorough use of.

***

One Friday in mid-March, she wakes up with the cramps from hell and it quickly becomes apparent that pain killers aren’t going to cut it. Her one comfort is that her class schedule is light and only one of those classes has an attendance requirement.

She pulls up her email on her phone, tapping out a quick apology to her professor and then another email to her desk partner to ask for notes. She’s about to dump her phone back on her nightstand and try for a little more sleep when she remembers that at some point in the last month or so Friday has begun to mean standing plans with Webster. It’s possible she might be feeling better by the evening, she hopes she will, but she doubts she’ll be feeling  _ good  _ . Certainly not up to educational films and Webster’s company. She makes her messages to the point –  _ ‘not doing movies’  _ – then pulls her blanket up over her head and waits for the pain to fuck off.

It’s a miserable weekend, and it turns out she missed a surprise quiz in one of her classes so she spends most of her free time during week working on a catch-up credit assignment and by the time Friday rolls around she’s eager to curl up with Web for some time chilling in front of whatever this week’s boring movie is and then some stress relief, but the clock slides past six-thirty, and past seven and is edging towards eight and there’s still no knock at her door.

Maybe Webster has found some better offer and fucked off out, it’s not like she actually promised to see Joe every Friday it’s just their routine, but her room is just downstairs and so Joe slips into her shoes and decides to investigate just what’s so interesting that Web would blow her off.

Plenty of people  _ are  _ out on a Friday night, so Joe doesn’t worry too much about being seen going down to Webster’s room – if Webster has come up to hers so many weeks in a row without arousing suspicion then they must be safe.

She knocks twice, making sure she’s loud enough to be heard even over headphones, and sure enough a moment later the door swings upon and Joe is face to face with Webster, who is frowning quizzically. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail and she’s wearing leggings and an oversized t-shit – the sort of thing plenty of people dressed in on campus but was far more casual than anything she’d ever seen Webster in. It rather belies Joe’s suspicion that she’d been ditched for a date or party

“What are you doing?”

“I… reading poetry?” Webster says, her nose crinkling up as she frowns.

“Wait, are you behind on a class?” Joe says, incredulously. She finds it hard to believe that Webster would let her homework build up to the point she’d have to skip out on plans to catch up, but then again, she still sometimes finds it hard to believe that Webster had kissed her that night.

Webster rolls her eyes. “No. Some people read for fun, you know.”

“I read,” Joe argues, “sometimes.” Then, “Wait you stood me up to read some poems that you don’t even need to be reading?”

“Stood you up?” Webster says incredulously.

“It’s Friday. We have a movie to watch.”

Webster’s frown deepens. “I thought… you cancelled. Your text said you were done?”

“Well yeah, since I felt like I was about to puke up my own uterus,” Joe says. “But I still need to keep up with the rest of the films.” And she wants to get laid, but she’s learned by now that Webster seems happiest when that element of what they’re doing goes unacknowledged and it’s a battle she’s choosing not to fight.

“Puke up—…” Webster pulls a disgusted face. “How would that even…? God, it’s a good thing you aren’t a biology major.”

“That was metaphor,” Joe says. “You’d think you’d know that, being a literature major.”

“It’s a simile actually,” Webster corrects. “Regardless, you didn’t explain. I… I thought you were just going to do the reading from now on or something.”

“Really?” Joe says, disbelievingly. She’s not a terrible student, she does the reading and then some for the classes she actually wants to be taking, but Webster suggesting that Joe would voluntarily pick books over films for a class she’s only taking to meet requirements has Joe half tempted to lean over and check Web isn’t running a fever. “Whatever. Are you going to drag yourself away from your poetry and come up?”

Webster shakes her head. “Stay here. My laptop will do just as well,” she says, “Better actually, since the speakers work.”

Joe raises her eyebrows. They have a routine, and she’d never thought that she’d be getting an invitation into Webster’s room, but whatever works works, and when Webster steps back from the doorway Joe follows her in.

Despite being fundamentally the same – white-wash walls, identical bedframes, mass produced desks and squeaky swivel chairs – Webster’s room looks nothing like Joe’s.  For a start, every flat surface has books on it and there’s no laundry in sight. Her bed is neatly made up with matching linens and a veritable mountain of cushions, she’s replaced the standard dorm curtains with much nicer ones, and there’s a thick plush rug on the floor. The fairy lights are a little pinterest-y for Joe’s tastes, but otherwise it’s a decent set up. If she’d known Web’s room was so much nicer than hers, Joe would have moved their movie nights down here weeks ago.

Joe has to shove a few cushions out of the way to make space for herself on Webster’s bed, and with the laptop’s working speakers there’s no headphones forcing them close but Joe drifts into Webster’s space regardless. The t-shirt she’s wearing is almost criminally soft and thin enough that it clings to Webster’s skin. Joe finds herself leaning her face against Webster’s shoulder as the film plays out and it feels more intimate than any of the times she’s seen Webster dressed in nothing at all.

Joe's eyes are heavy lidded by the time the credits roll, and she can feel the way that Webster is breathing deep and even and restful. Joe kisses her anyway, but it's a slow, lazy thing, borne of comfort and habit not passion. The opposite of what is supposed to be passing between them, of how they keep this from turning from casual into trouble, but Joe is too tired to fight her instincts. She’s not sure how much time they spend intertwined and making out with the ease of practise, only that it’s not until her eyes are growing heavy with sleep that she finally pulls herself away.

“I should go,” she says with a yawn. Go before she gives into the temptation to just curl up against Webster’s side and chance the consequences in the morning.

Webster nods, then adds, “I can’t watch a movie with you next week. Midterms.”

“Not at this time of night,” Joe says with a sleepy laugh.

“You know what I mean,” Webster grumbles, although it’s hard to take her seriously when she’s curled up among cushions and blankets like that. “I have to study.”

“Really, you can’t take a two hour break to watch one movie?” Joe asks, although if she’s realistic their encounters usually take at least twice that long. “C’mon Web, I thought you were all about making  me study for this stupid class.”

“You don’t have to stop studying,” Webster says, “I can still lend you copies. Or we could always just catch up later by doing extra films on a different night of the week… if you really care that much about studying, I mean.”

Joe really doesn’t care that much about studying, that was never really what this was about for her and she suspects that Webster is well aware of that too, it’s just a convenient excuse for what’s happening between them. She is a little shocked at the thought that Webster would give up another night of her week for Joe, but she’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“After mid-terms then,” she agrees, and departs.

***

Joe’s pretty sure her exams went well enough, she’s mostly picked easy classes this semester but she still seizes on spring break as a chance to kick back and do absolutely nothing.

She doesn’t see Webster much during the run up to exams and she’s not around during the break either, Joe emails her only for Webster to reply that she’s out of town interning with a magazine  – the nerd.

When she gets her midterm results back, they’re mostly as expected, solid Bs. There is one surprise though.

Her English Lit professor has given her an A.

Joe has never got an A in English in her life, and she’s never seen the point of trying to guess at author’s intentions or seeking deeper meanings of colours or seasons or any of the sort of stuff that in her experience literature teachers liked. All she’d done in the exam was rehash the stupid argument she and Webster had over whether a film need to have a plot or not - the answer being, yes, obviously, although she’d had to eventually concede a few points to Webster’s view that a plot could be about feelings and not stuff happening, although Joe had found most of those sorts of movies unspeakably dull.

With that A in the bag, it would be basically impossible for her grade to drop down to a failing average, and all she needs to do is pass the class. She could get her Friday nights back from dull movies. Of course, there’s the rest of think about, but though the sex is fantastic it doesn’t justify the way her gaze lingers, the sudden bursts of sentimentality she feels when she has Webster in her bed. There are other people she could be hooking up with if she reclaimed that time, people who were miles less infuriating.

Yet, how can she think of walking away when she can’t even leave what happens on Fridays out of her mind during the rest of the week? The first time she sees Webster again she finds herself sparking with urge to cross the room when she sees Webster across the dining hall and Webster smirks at her, and it’s not the first time that Joe has wanted to wipe the smug look off of her face, but it’s the first time Joe’s wanted to do so with her mouth.

They have the first of their catch up movie nights on a Tuesday and Joe allows the film a whole fifteen minutes to impress her before she gives up paying attention. It’s one thing to be bored stiff for a grade, but now she doesn’t need the marks so badly she’s not going to put up with tedium just because some reviewer had felt that the source of her boredom had artistic merit.

She traces circles on Webster’s bare knee as she tries to gauge how grouchy Webster will get if Joe says she can’t bear to watch the rest of the film, and she doesn’t even mean for her hand to start wandering higher, but Webster shifts in her seat a little causing her skirt to ride up her thighs and Joe follows the hem without a thought.

She drags her fingers up slowly, pushing Web’s skirt higher a few millimeters at a time and tracing circles over the faint remains of bite marks which linger despite their two weeks apart. Joe feels a silly sort of pride at the longevity of her handiwork, giving into the temptation to dig her fingers in a little harder.

In response, Webster pushes her off the bed.

“Jesus christ, Web. Really?” she says glaring up at her from the floor. She hadn’t been pressing nearly hard enough to warrant that kind of reaction.

“You’re trying to distract me right before a good part,” Webster complains, not even looking at Joe.

Good part, right... Joe pulls a face. “Well yeah, I’m bored, but you didn’t have to shove me.”

Webster rolls her eyes. “Oh don’t be a baby, you landed on the cushions.”

That's true; and honestly Joe can't help being a little amused by Webster’s outburst. Her goody-two-shoes facade crumbles whenever she’s mad and she gets hilariously passionate about the movies they watch. Still, Joe crosses her legs and settles on the floor in a pointed sulk.

About five minutes later she hears the shift of blankets as Webster scoots across the bed and then her fingers slide into Joe’s hair. When she glances up, Webster is still focused on the screen, so Joe shuts her eyes, leaning back against the bedframe and just enjoying the touch. Web strokes back and forth, occasionally twirling or smoothing strands, but mostly her touches are idle and inattentive but remarkably soothing.

The next thing she knows is Webster gently whispering her name.

She blinks, rubs at her unexpectedly heavy eyes, and looks around the room.

“You feel asleep,” Webster says.  “I guess you really did find the film boring.”

“I did say so,” Joe grumbles, peeling herself off the floor and stretching out her now stiff limbs.

“You complain all of the films are boring,” Web points out.  “You don't normally fall asleep.”

“Well you don't normally push me off the bed,” she says. “Figured you'd be up for it after two weeks.” Unless those two weeks hadn't been a dry spell for Webster like they had for Joe. She was fairly sure Webster hadn’t been fucking anybody else on during term time - she barely had time for Joe between all her study groups and the work she did for the campus newspaper - but they weren't a couple and Joe supposed it was perfectly possible Webster had found the time to fit in some fun during her spring break.

She thinks for a moment about asking before realising that she doesn't want to know.  If Webster says there have been other people Joe knows she’ll be annoyed even though she has no reason to when they’re just acquaintances who fuck sometimes. And if she gets annoyed things will be strange between them and although what they have isn't important she doesn't want to ruin it either.

They’ve never actually had a movie night that wasn't followed by sex before but ss she yawns she can't pretend she’s up for it tonight. “This was catch up, it doesn't matter if I nap,” she says.

Webster frowns.  “This is for your grades remember.”

“Nah, I aced that exam,” Joe starts to brag, before remembering that without grades she has no reason to be here at all. “I need to keep it up,” she bullshits, “But one little nap won't do any harm.” She means to say more, but she interrupts herself with a yawn and Webster laughs.

“I take it by how un-rested-up you are that you were partying hard over the break?” she says.

Actually, Joe had been napping hard and she’s pretty sure her fatigue is a side effect of her body reacting to no longer getting to sleep in till noon every day, but she’d rather Web keep believing the partying theory. It sounds cooler. “Yeah, I think I’m gonna head back upstairs before I crash,” she admits, “But I’ll try not to sleep through Friday unless the film is really boring.”

Webster rolls her eyes but she’s smiling a bit, something soft in her expression that follows Joe back to her dorm and into her dreams.

***

The next time Joe sees Web, there are dark circles under her eyes. That’s something she’s never seen before. She squints, trying to judge if it’s that Webster is wearing less make up the usual, or if she’s just so tired that her concealer isn’t doing its job, but it’s hard to tell.

As she enters, Joe takes in the slump of her shoulders and the way she’s leaning to one side. It adds up to something not good. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I just,” Webster yawns. “I had this 20th century lit presentation so I got up early to practise.”

“How early?” Joe says incredulous. She can’t imagine that Webster needs much, since every impression Joe has ever had of her suggests that she’d ace her  lit classes just by showing up.

“Five,” Webster says with a shrug, like that isn’t basically still the middle of the night, “which wouldn’t be so bad except I was up till one reformatting my references since one of the seniors mentioned that Dr Jones prefers APA references and I’d done all mine in Harvard style.”

Joe nods, although she doesn’t really understand. She uses the automatic reference formatting tools that came with her word processor and her professors have never indicated a preference for references beyond that they be included.

The film, once they put it on, is actually not that bad. It’s not something Joe would ever have chosen to watch on her own but if a friend had recommended it to her she might have given it a chance. There’s a killer whale and a woman getting her legs ripped off to start with, which is a lot more action than most of her class assigned films contain.

As the film plays on Webster seems to lean closer and closer but Joe doesn’t want to make it weird by drawing attention to it. Shortly after the underground fight club scenes -damn it, she’s actually kind of getting into this movie- Webster’s head drops onto her shoulder and Joe can’t help but look over at her. Webster’s lips are parted slightly and her eyes are shut, and as Joe watches the rise and fall of her chest she realises that Webster has fallen asleep.

It kind of makes her want to laugh after how Web had teased her when it was Joe falling asleep, but if she does Webster is bound to wake up and she looks so peaceful that it feels wrong to do so.

Joe is tense of the rest of the film, holding herself carefully still lest some twitch make Webster’s head fall.

When the credits start to play she knows that she probably ought to wake Webster, but she’d looked so genuinely exhausted earlier, not even her makeup and her self-inflated attitude managing to cover how little energy she had left. Joe nudges her gently and whispers her name, but that’s all she can bring herself to do, and when Webster barely stirs Joe instead eases her way slowly into a laying position, keeping Webster carefully braced against her.

She remembers a science class she took once explaining that relationships were built on pheromones and proximity, that touch was the foundation of all bonding. She can’t remember the specifics but she does know that as much as Webster drives her crazy, the feelings of having Webster curled up against her makes her feel so stupidly fond of the nerd that she doesn't know what to do with herself.

***

It’s strange waking up with Webster again, a bizarre mirror of the last time. Even fully dressed and with nothing beyond the wholly innocent having passed between them Webster seems uncomfortable again, apologising for the intrusion like it wasn’t Joe’s choice to invite her up and decline to wake her. Joe, frankly, doesn’t have enough fucks to give pre-coffee to care about anything other than the fact that when Webster gets out of the bed she takes all the warmth with her. It’s possible she whines but nobody could prove it.

It’s a Saturday morning and she wants to sleep in and her dream fogged mind can’t think of a single reason Webster shouldn’t join her for that. But instead, she’s left cold and bereft as Webster puts her shoes back on and reclaims her DVD, fixing her hair because god forbid their peers see her looking a little ruffled, and leaves.

Joe tries to go back to sleep, but she can’t get comfy now she has no source of heat to curl against, tosses and turns for a while before giving up and dragging herself into the shower.

As she’s toweling off her hair there’s a knock on the far side door of the bathroom, Skinny obviously impatient for her turn. Joe makes sure the towel is wrapped around herself properly then opens it. After all, if Skinny just wants to brush her teeth or something they can just share - it’s not like Skinny is going to complain about Joe being in a towel when they’ve been sharing a bathroom since sophomore year.

It turns out Skinny had just left her chapstick on the counter and wanted it back, but once she's in she seems to think of half a dozen other things to do, but Joe isn't phased by the faffing, focused on working a few of the more stubborn tangles in her hair.

At least she's not phased until Skinny turns on her and says, “Sooooo... You and Webster, huh? How’s that going?”

Joe just barely manages to keep from dropping her comb, instead accidentally yanks her own hair uncomfortable, but she tries to keep her tone as casual as possible as she says, “Me and Webster what?”

Skinny stares at Joe. “Joe. I share a wall with you. Headphones only do so much.”

Ah. “Um… it’s not-” Joe starts but Skinny shakes her head.

“Don’t even try it. Honestly you’re lucky you’re right at the end of the hall or the whole building would know by now.”

Joe can feel her cheeks start to heat. She’d known there weren’t exactly quiet, Webster especially, but when it was just the two of them it was easy to forget that there was still a whole building of people just a thin wall away. “I... look, it’s... it’s not a  _ thing  _ ...”

Skinny looks incredulous. “Joe, I could set a fucking clock by you two almost, so it’s sure as shit something.”

Joe isn't sure what her face does in reaction to that but it's enough to have Skinny rolling her eyes. “I’m only asking because she was over last night and I never had to put my headphones and I didn’t here her leave either... which makes me wonder exactly what you two are doing?”

If Skinny had asked a few weeks ago it would have been easy for Joe to say hooking up, but after the last few times... she shrugs. “We’re just... having a little fun, y’know. And I get some studying done at the same time. It's just a casual thing.”

Skinny pulls a face. “That’s a terrible idea and I think you both know it, but if you’ve kept it up this long you aren’t going to see reason just because I say so.”

Joe unravels the last knot in her hair and shrugs.  “It's not that big of a deal.”

Skinny doesn't seem convinced.

***

 

It’s funny how fast what was once strange grows familiar. Every time Joe’s literature class discusses what they’d studying next Joe finds herself predicting how Webster will react to it - always, always with more respect than the garbage deserves but sometimes it's sincere and sometimes Joe can see that she’s only going through the motions and says what she thinks she ought to in accordance with literary and artistic canon.

The association is all well and good until the day her professor decides to screen a section of their next assigned material in class and Joe finds herself squeezing her legs together, arousal curling through her in anticipation of a hook up that isn’t coming because Webster isn’t here. She’s sat through uncomfortable classes before, when she’s been sick or tired or hungover, but this hyperawareness of the seam in her jeans, of how Webster could certainly be annoyed by the way the lead actor is delivering his lines and rough because of it if she were here is an unfamiliar suffering.

She leaves the class with the thought of texting Webster baiting her, but that’s not what they have, they might be fucking but Webster isn’t a booty call to be summoned just because Joe is turned on by weeks of being conditioned to a habit of shitty movies being followed up with mind blowing orgasms.

Without anymore classes she goes back to her own room, lies in bed and thinks about what it would be like to be at liberty to show up at Webster’s door, to let herself in and push Web up against the nearest hard surface and for Webster to meet Joe’s desperation with a smile and an offer of satisfaction instead of the disdain and rejection Joe suspects she’d get if she tried that for real. She slides a hand into her jeans thinking of Webster as eager as she is, who’d welcome Joe’s arrival instead of trying to hide her from their dormmates. The fantasy of Webster welcoming her is enough to let her work off the unexpected lust but it’s just a fantasy, and she’s cold and alone when she’s done.

 

***

Two weeks later, when they’re finally caught up Joe’s classes again, her seminar tutor makes an announcement that makes a total mess of Joe’s plans. She mulls it over for the rest of the class, but in the end settles on honestly as the best policy. She hesitates a moment as she leaves, then types out:

_ Class cancelled - no assignment this week _

She’ll miss getting laid, hell, despite the irrationality of it if she's being honest she miss watching a shitty movie in dubious company; but she’s sure Webster will be happy to have some of her time back.

It's a shock therefore, when she reads the answering text.

_ I suppose that means it’s your turn to pick the movie. _

It makes no sense. As far as she can tell, aside from the fucking this has been about two things for Webster, Joe’s grades and Webster’s losing battle to prove that the hideously pretentious films Joe’s been assigned are actually worth watching. If Web is just using their film nights as an excuse to fuck then she could tell Joe to get ahead on her work or suggest they watch some other highbrow film that would relate back to literature. Instead this text is an invitation to something else altogether.

Joe stares down at her phone.

Well, she’d be doing them both a disservice if she didn't take this opportunity to broaden Webster's cinematic horizons.

For the next few days, she scours lists of movies trying to come up with the perfect pick. It’s not that she cares about impressing Webster because what Webster thinks of her matters, but she’s sat through weeks of Web defending crap movies and she’s determined to prove a point. It has to be brilliant, something that defies all of Webster’s pretentious sensibilities and yet is undeniably good.

By Friday, she has the perfect movie. It’s funny, it’s compelling, it touches upon deeper issues; in fact, it’s such a classic that Joe wouldn’t be surprised if Webster hasn’t seen it before despite it not being her usual artsy fodder, but once Joe has thought of it she has too much of an urging to watch it to pick anything else.

She’s practically buzzing with excitement when she ushers Webster into her room on Friday night, has the lights turned down and the film loaded and ready to go.

Then she settles in for one and three quarter hours of cinematic magic.

When the credits finally roll and Joe tabs out of the menu, she’s swiping moisture from her eyes.

“Are you crying?” Webster says, sounding incredulous.

“Yeah and?” Joe says, a little defensively. Everyone cries at Toy Story, so Webster really can’t judge her. “How come you aren’t?”

"I don't really cry at stuff," Webster says with a shrug. Sure enough, she’s dry eyed.

“What, ever?” It seems unlikely. Joe is hardly one to turn on the waterworks at the slightest of upsets but she’s never met anybody wholly immune to the way a well-crafted film score could tug at the heartstrings, or those sad puppy adoption commercials that always played around Christmas.

“Well it’s a little…” Webster shrugs. “I just don’t. I cried as a kid, but once I got past middle school… I mean sometimes I slipped up but my mother always said that crying is only acceptable for births, marriages, and funerals - anything else is undignified and manipulative.”

Joe opens her mouth, trying to gauge how annoyed Webster will be if Joe tells her that her mother is some sort of sociopath, but before she can Webster adds, “Of course, I did used to cry at  _ everything  _ as a child, so I can’t blame her for getting frustrated.”

Joe shakes her head. The more she learns the more sense it makes that Webster is so uptight and weird. Although the thought of Webster as a crybaby child doesn’t shock her, only that Webster managed to shake it so completely.

“Okay, whatever. Your tear ducts are defective. It must have made you sad though,” she pressed. Nobody could possibly be so heartless as to not be at least a little affected by the movie.

The way Webster’s fidgets with her hair suggests otherwise though. “I mean, maybe I’d have felt it more if I’d see the first two.”

Joe stares at her, agog. “You what?” How? Honestly, she’s heard a lot of weird shit from Webster but this is by far the most outlandish. “And you didn’t think to say that  _ before  _ I put the third one on?”

Webster bites her lip. “I didn’t think, well... You were very insistent,” she notes.

That true enough, but not a good enough justification to stop Joe leaning over and punching her in the arm. “Honestly, Web, you’re hopeless. You’d better not have anywhere to be in the morning because now we’re going to have to watch the first two.”

Webster rolls her eyes, but it’s not like she’s making a lot of effort to get off the bed, so Joe feels no regret in pulling up the first movie. This time they’ll do things right.

***

As spring creeps into summer the weather turns hellishly hot, the kind of heat that makes Joe glad that she's got an upper floor dorm so she can keep her window cracked at night to let in the slightly cooler air. Her blankets all now live in heap at the end of her bed and she's taken to sleeping undressed – having even a thin layer on her traps too much heat.

She does her best to avoid exposing herself to it, sticking to cool and shady spaces and avoiding places like the dining hall during main meal times when it’s likely to be crowded with sweaty bodies. She can’t hide out forever though, and during the second week of heat she has to run to the library for a textbook. Since every layer of fabric is hellish right now she dresses as lightly as possible, just grabs one of her well-worn tank tops off what she's pretty sure is the  _  clean   _ laundry pile, tugging it over her head, and a pair of cargo shorts she's had since high school that mostly sit at the bottom of her wardrobe but have never made it to goodwill because when these rare bursts of unbearably hot weather they're the coolest things she owns

She’s lucky that her dorm is centrally located, but every step while she’s out of cover has her dripping with sweat and when she finally makes it through the library doors is her purest experience of bliss. The A/C is blasting, cool air rushing into her lungs, and shit she doesn't know how she's going to leave.

It's busy, even busier than it usually is before exams, apparently Joe's not the only one who appreciates the chance to escape the heat.

As she crosses the floor she’s unsurprised to see Webster. She’s staked out a study table and walling in her position with a mountain of books. She's wearing a short sleeved blouse but there's a jacket draped over the back of her chair – suggesting that Webster has been leaving for the library early enough to beat the heat and not leaving it until the sun's gone down. Normally Joe would judge, but in this weather she almost wants to do the same.

She passes her by, getting the book she needs and checking it out, but as she’s returning she can’t help but look over at Webster, who is scowling down at her book. Instead of taking the stairs, she swings left and over to Webster’s side.

“You know, I never thought I’d see you looking at a book like that,” she says, and Webster jumps, knocking over her fortunately sealed water bottle in surprise.

She rights it and then turns. “Oh! It’s you,” she says, looking Joe up and down with wide eyes.

“Yes, in the library - shocking I know,” Joe teases, and Webster rolls her eyes.

“Not that shocking,” she says. “Are you here for the A/C or did you actually want a book?”

Indeed, around them there are several people lounging at study desks not just ignoring their books but without books entirely. “I need a textbook for stats,” she says, holding it up, “And then I was gonna grab some lunch.”

“It’s lunchtime?” Webster looks genuinely startled, glancing towards the window like she’s expecting to see something other than the glaring midday sun. The library, Joe recalls, has twenty-four hour opening in the run up to exams.

“Do you want to come?” She’s not really expecting Webster to say yes, so Joe is startled when her eyes dart from the books and then back to Joe then nods.

"I can't concentrate now anyway," she grumbles, as if it's somehow Joe who is at fault for the fact it’s past noon.

Still, she feels like she’s done the world a service getting Webster out into the sunlight for a while.

***

“You literally couldn’t be more wrong,” Webster complains, as she sets the laptop aside. “Did you even  _ watch  _ it, or have you just been staring out the window for the last two hours?”

“I watched it,” Joe says. It had been a simple movie with little in the way of dialogue or plot, all pretty visuals and no substance. “But, maybe all that deep shit you just said was written in the book, but I sure didn’t see it on screen.”

“It’s implied.”

Joe rolls her eyes, “Well they didn’t do a very good job of it, did they?”

Webster tips her head back. “Honestly, I’ve never met anybody as determined as you to argue these things.”

The expression on her face as she looks at Joe is focused, like she's seeing more than just knobbly knees and sharp elbows, or a smart mouth and a bad attitude. It makes Joe feel twitchy and exposed, and searching for a distraction Joe trails her fingers along the tops of Web’s stockings and without quite thinking about the words, “What’s up with these, anyway?” fall from her mouth.

“Nothing is up with them,” Webster says with a baffled frown.

“It’s not the nineteen-forties,” Joe points out, “Who wears actual stockings these days?”

Webster shrugs. “Me. Sometimes I want to wear skirts but not have bare legs, and separate stockings are comfier.”

“Seriously?”

Webster looks at her like Joe is the odd one for being surprised. “Yeah, and if I get a run up one leg I don’t have to replace the pair. It’s sensible.”

Joe blinks and laughter bubbles up in her chest. Webster says that like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and it makes Joe wondering how on earth she got to the third year of their acquaintance without realising that underneath her perfect preppy exterior Webster was so weird.

***

The heat breaks after a week and a half, and Joe can finally settle back into jeans and flannels without worrying about melting. She runs into Webster in the dining hall and ends up eating dinner with her. Skinny, who was on her way out at Joe was entering, catches her eye and gives her a  _ look  _ but Joe just brushes her off. There’s nothing about cheap cafeteria food that merits that sort of reaction. And since they’re both heading back to the same place afterwards, it only makes sense they they’d walk together.

They run into a few people on the way —Trish Christenson, who has a question for Web about some mandatory bio lab they share; Skip Muck and Anna Penkala who are playing hopscotch like they’re in elementary school not college; and Becca Compton, carrying a shoeless Georgie Luz between buildings, which didn’t even strike Joe as odd since evidence suggested Georgie viewed everybody above 5”8 as transport— but nobody seemed as surprised as Joe thought they ought to be to see her walking with somebody she’d never got along with.

They’re just crossing the lawn when a man jogging by crashes into them, the cup in his hand toppling and spilling its contents over them. Joe feels a few icy droplets splatter against her, but Webster’s caught the worst of it, her cardigan almost soaked through.

“Hey, watch it asshole!” Joe hollers, and the rude fucker doesn’t even bother to turn back.

Webster slides the wet cardigan off, nose wrinkling as she takes in the state of it. "Eurgh and it's soda so it’s sticky...." she complains. “Who even takes a cup of soda running?”

“Drunk people?” Joe suggests. It’s a little early but they are on a college campus and while she’d never wanted to go running while drunk there’s no accounting for some people’s hobbies. Although they’re still edging into summer, without the heatwave the evening is still cool and Joe can see goose pimples already breaking out on Webster's arms, and they’re still quite a walk from the dorm. Too cool for Web to be walking about in just a delicate sundress without getting chilled. Webster wraps the cardigan around the strap of her purse to keep it out of the way, pulling out a pack of tissues to wipe the worst of the soda spill off her arms. “Here,” Joe says, tugging off her jacket, and then the oversized green and red plaid shirt she’s wearing underneath, she pushes the shirt into Webster’s hands before pulling the jacket back on over her t-shirt. “See, this is why I wear layers.”

Webster laughs a little, examining the shirt for a moment, as if wary of it. Perhaps she is, god knows Joe’s pretty sure that Webster’s wardrobe is almost certainly a plaid free zone. It passes inspection though, and Webster slips her arms into the sleeves, before wrapping her arms around herself. The first is loose on Joe but fits close on Webster and she leaves it unbuttoned.

The shirt is so unlike anything Webster would wear that if anybody saw them now they’d know right away that it was Joe’s, maybe walk away wondering if that meant that Webster was Joe’s too, and it makes something dark and possessive curl in her gut at the thought of staking such a public claim. It’s ridiculous, because Webster isn’t hers and Joe wouldn’t really want her to be -Webster is  _ annoying  _ \- there’s just something about see her wrapped up in flannel and looking so at ease that makes her seem more touchable than usual, like Joe could wrap an arm around her and not get shrugged off, that means Joe has to work harder than usual to remind herself that Webster isn’t somebody she can want those intimacies with.

***

Joe isn’t at all surprised when Webster sends are a text to let her know that what has become their movie night will have to go on hold once again because Webster will be studying all through finals but as the week goes on Joe find’s she a little alarmed by her intensity - she’d assumed midterms had shown her the worst of Webster getting wrapped up in exam prep, but apparently that was just a taster compared to finals.

She’s used to seeing Webster around at least occasionally, they live in the same building after all, but it’s like she’s vanished. She’s not at meals or at the biweekly dorm meeting that nobody would go to were it not for the fact their RA, Carla Lipton, always brought some sort of baked goods to share with attendees and lured people in that way.

Joe doesn’t have the much last minute studying to do, has mostly kept on top of things during the semester and honestly isn’t that bothered about stressing herself out cramming for As. However, she suffers from the misfortune of having a birthday that falls right in the middle of finals which means that while she’d still happily take the day away from studying as a chance to just  _ breathe  _ most of her friends and classmates are too busy for celebration, she’s resigned herself to the fact that she’ll be lucky if she gets so much as a ‘happy birthday’ called out to her in the halls. Not that it’s totally miserable, her mom is aware of her plight and has always compensated with long phone calls and a care package that’s a little excessive so close to the end of the semester but always appreciated.

When the day rolls around Skinny wishes her well in the bathrooms, and a few other people remember at breakfast, but it’s otherwise a normal day. She’s back in her dorm waiting on her mom’s phone call that evening when there’s an unexpected knock at her door.

When she opens it, she’s stunned to see Webster for the first time in days.

Her hair is tied up in a messy ponytail, curls looking a little limp. Her face is bare of makeup, and Joe is immediately struck by the dark shadows under her eyes. She looks pale and wan, almost ill and Joe wonders when she last pulled her head from her books to venture outside. More importantly, she wonders what on earth dragged Webster from her self-imposed isolation to come knocking at Joe’s door.

“Happy birthday,” she says, thrusting a neatly wrapped package into Joe’s direction. It’s even got a ribbon wrapped around it and tied in a neat bow, which Joe thought only happened in commercials.

She’s suspicious of the shape and weight of it as soon as she takes it from Webster, and sure enough when she peels back that paper it’s a book. Joe’s mother raised her to be grateful for any gift she got, since it was the giving that mattered rather than the gift, but some of her disinterest in the paperback must show on her face because Webster quickly cuts in. “Look I know you prefer graphic novels to uh… traditional books,” she says, displaying an uncharacteristic streak of tact, “But I really think you’ll like this one.”

Joe turns the book in her hands, examining it. The cover does look cool, not the sort of thing she’d have expected Webster to pick up, but, “The  _ eighth  _ book of the series?” she asks. “You know I haven’t read anything in this-” she skims the blurb, “-Discworld series. Or are you really saying I should start with book eight of a series? Because I always had you pegged as a purist.” The only explanation Joe can think of is that it’s some kind of gag gift, although if that’s what Webster’s attempting she’s fallen rather short of success.

“I know you haven’t read them,” Webster says placatingly. “And I know it’s the eighth, and I like the first ones, but they aren’t the best to get into it with, and these books are important enough that it’s okay to compromise on the chronology in order to get you to see how good they are. They’re… well, the series contains some of my favourite books. Honestly I was surprised when I realised you haven’t read any of them, I really do think they’re the sort of thing you’d like.”

“Right… cool…” Joe says uncomfortably, and Webster shakes her head.

“I know you think my taste is horrible,” she says, “But these are nothing like class readings. Trust me.” Her eyes have gone wide and imploring and there’s an insistence in her tone that Joe doesn’t quite know how to react to. But if Web is so eager for Joe to read this thing that she’s dragged herself from her studies to pitch its case then it’s obviously important.

She leaves after that, nothing else to add to her case and no doubt the library is calling to her. Joe flops down on her bed. She’s not big on novels, but if Webster is calling these books her favourites, beating out centuries of classic literary canon and getting Web to acknowledge that there are merits to something that looks a whole lot like  _ genre  _ fiction.

Three days later, Joe knocks on Webster’s door.

“How many more are there?”

Webster grins, and Joe suddenly feels a little like prey, especially when she says, “Oh, forty-one if you don’t count any of the accompanying ones.”

***

Joe has packed around half of her belongings into boxes, which will go in a storage facility for the summer, and is busy trying to sort the other half into what else can be stored and what she’ll need with her when she’s back home. She’s sorting through her DVD collection when she finds the book that Webster loaned her, another from the series Joe’s birthday gift had come from, in among the boxes. She’d finished it but not got around to returning it, and she supposes she ought to do that before it ends up accidentally mixed up with her packing.

She doesn’t bother with shoes, just grabs the book and wanders down to Webster’s door in her socks.

She knocks, and hears Web’s voice call from inside, “It’s open.”

“Hey Web, do you know…oh…” Joe pauses, staring. She’s obviously missed something because Webster is standing in the centre of the room in what can only be described as an evening gown, bare shouldered and sashed at the waist with a deep wine red skirt the flows to the ground, with her hair is piled up on top of her head, a mass of twisting braids and loose strands carefully coiled into some elaborate Grecian looking style. “Um… Going somewhere?”

“It’s the newspaper’s end of year formal tonight,” Webster says, glancing over her shoulder at Joe. “They’ve booked out a room at some restaurant I’ve never heard of but is apparently really hip with the campus food blogging contingent.”

“Sounds fun,” Joe says, still taking in the sight of Webster all done up like some painting.

Webster shrugs, “Mostly it’s going to be a bunch of English students standing around stroking each other’s egos. Now that Leckie has graduated the chances of anybody drunkenly jumping onto a table to serenade random strangers in the bar has plummeted, which is shame because that was definitely last year’s highlight.”

Joe remembers Roberta Leckie, she’d been cool for an English nerd, and not above using the campus paper to criticise the university, had been threatened with suspension over a few more vitriolic editorials if Joe recalled correctly. The popularity of the paper had plummeted when Leckie’s reign had ended, but there was still a faithful band of writers that put out a fortnightly edition for those who cared to be kept up to date on campus news and events but apparently had never heard of social media.

Leaning over her dresser, Webster is fumbling with the clasp of a necklace.

“You want a hand with that?” Joe asks, and hopes that her voice doesn’t sound as weak to Webster as it does to her.

Webster passes the necklace over and tips her head forward, baring the long column of her neck and Joe guides the clasp into place, a simple enough task when she can see what she’s doing, but she lingers. None of the marks she’d left scattered over Webster’s skin show above the neckline of her dress, she probably considered it in her choosing, discrete as they were trying to be, and Joe is sure that Webster would be annoyed if she knew that Joe was kind of sad about that. Still, she finds herself leaning forward to brush the slightest hint of a kiss above the necklace’s clasp, steps back with a hint of the odd chemical taste of perfume lingering on her lips.

As Webster turns back to face her Joe says, “You look…” gorgeous, stunning, impossible, “fine.” She wonders if Webster is taking anybody to this thing, or being taken by somebody she’ll meet once Joe is gone. Or maybe she’s going alone with plans to pick up. Looking like that she hardly lacked for options.

“Really?” is Webster’s answer, as if she doesn’t have a mirror right there.

“Sure… your hair is very fancy.”

Webster brushes her fingertips against the up-do self-consciously. “Thanks. It took forever to get it like this. The tutorial claimed it was an easy style, but I can only assume that means for people with four arms.”

It’s on the tip of Joe’s tongue to offer her assistance if Webster ever needs to style her hair like that again. Despite her own short locks Joe has always had a talent for hair and she’s gotten plenty of practise on other people’s hair. She wouldn’t be at all unhappy to take the time to work on Webster’s hair, carefully teasing each strand into place with her fingers. Instead she just says, “Well, I’ll leave your book on the table then,” and makes a hasty exit.

They’re days from going home, and this is no time to get getting ideas.

***

Joe is sitting on her suitcase, trying to get the zipper to close completely, when Webster sticks her head around Joe’s half open door.

“Oh are you on your way out?” she asks.

Joe nods. “My bus is at lunchtime, but I don’t wanna end up snarled in traffic trying to get to the station.”

Webster nods. “I’m not flying for a few days,” she notes, “But then, I don’t have as far to go.”

Finally, with a firm yank, Joe manages to get her case closed. “Did you want something?” she says, knowing she sounds a little abrupt, but long distance travelling always stresses her out. The thought of something going wrong and making her late, and then having to shell out another small fortune to replace the ticket she could barely afford in the first place makes her tetchy.

“Here,” Webster says, passing her a folded up slip of paper. “It’s got my netflix login, because you can have two people on an account; and my personal email because well, I know you sent the first email to my college account because you didn’t know my personal address, but it seems silly to keep doing that, especially when I’m probably not going to be logging into that account so much when I’m not getting class emails to it.”

“What?”

When Joe looks up at her Webster is shifting a little where she stands. “I just... well, you’ve watched a lot of the films I like, and you seemed... well I thought we were having a good time the few chances you got to pick the movie, so I thought you might want to...” She shrugs.

“What, like, just hang out and watch movies?” Joe checks, and Webster ducks her head, withdrawing her hand.

“I’m sure you’ll be busy,” she says, “I mean, with your friends from back home, I just figured...”

“Are you telling me you’ve had a netflix subscription this whole time and have been holding out on me?” Joe asks, getting over her case to reach for the paper in Webster’s hand. “Give that here.”

Webster surrenders the paper with little protest, looking at Joe quizzically for a moment before she right, “Okay, well... have a nice summer?”

Joe hadn’t really thought about staying in touch with Webster over the summer but she tucks the paper into her pocket, trying to get a read of Webster that might make it clear if she really means this, or if this is like an end of summer camp promise to stay in touch and be BFFs forever, only to be discarded after a few awkward phone calls and the gradual realisation that the relationship wasn’t founded on deep connection but on forced proximity.

She thinks it might be the latter, but she finds she doesn’t want it to be.

“You too,” she says, and then watches as Webster walks away.

Over the last few months Web has gone from being just another face in the crowd to someone that Joe looks forward to seeing every day, seeks out when she's not around. Their cases are packed and they're waiting on cabs, Web to the airport and Joe to the bus station, the first step towards being thousands of miles apart.

It's going to be a long summer without her.


	2. Summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joe will never not be glad to see her family, but the distance from from Webster makes it harder to let lust be the focus of her feelings.

No matter how many times she makes the trip Joe doesn’t think she’ll ever get tired of seeing her mom waiting in the bus station. However far she goes and however long she stays there, this will always be home.

Ruth is with her and as soon as she catches sight of Joe she’s barrelling across the space between them, heedless of the multiple near collisions she causes, to fling her arms around Joe. “Why did you have to go live so far away?” she whines, but she’s beaming up at Joe, so Joe just ruffles her hair.

“How you doing kid?” she says.

Ruth grins. “I have a teachers day!”

That explains why she’s here on a school day. Joe passes the handle of her case her to Ruth, who accepts it like it’s an honour even though Joe knows that a week from now when the novelty has worn off she’ll be complaining about being asked to pass Joe the sugar at breakfast.

Then she crosses the hall and flings her arms around her mom, who hugs back just as tightly as Joe presses her head into her shoulder, breathing deeply to catch the faint scent of perfume and home that has been absent while she’s been gone.

“Have a good semester?” her mom asks and Joe grins as she releases her.

“Yeah, glad to be home though.”

“As you should be,” her mom jokes. “Now we’d best get moving. I bought cake for your homecoming, but if Hannah and the boys get back before us I can’t promise there will be any left.”

It’s too late and by the time they’ve wound their way through the afternoon traffic everyone else is home, and waiting for her if she’s any judge of if since the only times they can all be found in one room are mealtimes and special occasions. Hannah is sprawled across an armchair and glued to her phone, only acknowledging their return my means of guiltily moving her legs from where they were slung over the arm of the chair before their mom sees. Jacob and Daniel are on the floor and engross in a game, though they look up to offer her a wave. Leah, however, abandons her exercise book to wrap Joe in a surprisingly forceful hug for one so small.

Her dad being present though, means that so is some of the cake. Apparently he hadn’t even told her mom he’d be getting out of work early, but Joe loves the surprise.

They have pizza for dinner and Joe sometimes suspects that the only reason her brothers are ever happy to see her is because they’ve been conditioned to associate her coming home with being allowed treat food.

It’s refreshing to be able to catch up with them in person, everything feels flatter over long distance communication and she’s missed their energy, but somehow sitting on buses for the greater part of three days has left her exhausted so it’s not long before she excuses herself to her room.

She knows that they said they would talk, but she’s still a little surprised she turns on her laptop to find Skype showing a missed call notification from Webster. She clicks to return the call, making sure her headphones are plugged in as a partial protection from the nosey children who’ll be in every bit of her business for the next three months, and waits only a few seconds before the call is accepted and Webster’s face appears on screen.

Her face is pretty close to the camera, blocking out any clear background which is a shame because Joe is kind of curious to know what Webster’s home looks like. Lavish, no doubt, unlike the boxroom that Joe is cramming into and feeling grateful for the fact she’s not having to share it, but it’s the details that will give her away. Webster dorm was tidy and decorated best she could but still fundamentally impersonal, in the way that all dorms were, but what she made of her own space would be telling. They have all summer so Joe is sure there’ll be plenty of chances to get a look later.

Webster looks tired, her blouse crumpled and her curls limp, like the journey had taken something from her even though Joe knows her flight couldn’t have been more than a few hours. Or perhaps it’s just the lighting in New York or something unflattering in the camera lens. Still Joe asks, “You get home okay?”

“The flight was fine,” Web says, “But I swear taxi prices double every time I’m out of the city. I only had fifty bucks on me so I had to get the driver to pull over by an ATM when I realised it was going to go over.”

“How much?!” Joe blinks, trying to process dropping more than fifty bucks on a cab and just can’t. “Did you accidentally fly into Jersey instead or something?”

That earns her a laugh.

“New York isn’t just the six blocks that they show in the movies,” Webster jokes. “And cabs are expensive. As dubious as their corporate ethics are, there is a reason that uber is so popular. Still, I’m sure your trip was worse.”

Joe shrugs her concern off. She can’t pretend the bus ride is pleasant, but she knew when she picked Toccoa college that she’d have to endure it and she’s mastered the art of putting her headphones in and just riding out the cramped seats and the boredom.

It’s only been a handful of days since they’ve seen each other last, hardly enough time to generate news, and yet somehow Webster keeps her talking long into the night.

 

***

 

She manages to put off unpacking for a few days by wearing clothes that she’d left in the laundry over winter break, and she could probably scrape by for a few more but it’s also so inappropriate for the weather, so eventually she has to face her suitcase.

It’s a mess inside - she’d never been an organised packer and what little order there was had been destroyed in the last hours of packed when she’d had to cram a dozen extra things in, and then the whole the had been shaken about in transit for good measure.

She tips the whole case out onto the floor, the best way to force herself not to leave things languishing in there for weeks, and then begins to clear it. The clothes are easy enough, she piles them into her drawers uncaring if they crease, the massive amounts of what can only be called junk which she has accumulated are a little more problematic. Anything that’s made it into her case can’t be thrown away but that doesn’t mean she has a place for all of it.

She knows a lot of people complain about dorm rooms being small, but the room she has here is even smaller and there’s barely room for more than her bed and her drawers - the rest of her stuff having to be crammed onto the window ledge or on top of the drawers.

She's trying to work out if she can get away with putting it all back in her case then shoving the case under her bed until another day when she spots something she doesn’t remember packing.

It’s another book from the series that Webster has her hooked on, the cover design familiar but not any of the ones she’d read yet. She flips it open, paging through to the list of titles in the series, and oh, this is the one that comes next. She’s certain she doesn’t remember Webster loaning it to her for her to have packed it by accident

Still it’s not like she can return it now. She imagines Webster will be going on family vacations, to Florida or maybe even Europe. It would suit Webster to spend her summer lounging on the beach in a tiny bikini, surrounded by tall, tanned girls with perfect makeup, or smarmy surfer boys she could bring home to her parents.  She'll probably return in September with a tan, a phone full of new contacts, and stories of the glamorous places she's been and people she's met. Joe has been lucky to get a call from her at all, but she can’t imagine they’ll last.

Still, there might be an opportunity to mail to her so next time she has Web on a call, Joe asks what she’ll be doing with her summer.

“Oh, well my gold-digging Aunt Harriet is in town and she’s already scheduled half a dozen salon appointments for me because apparently my hair is like straw and I’ve been poisoning my skin by washing with regular water out of the tap instead of some pseudoscience activated water and she worries about me ruining my assets.”

“I... what?” Joe says, not even sure where to start.

“Yeah, she’s a little bit... eccentric; but she’s had three very generous divorce settlements and her main occupation is going on holiday meet more rich men so it’s obviously working for her even if my father does call her an embarrassment behind her back. Also personally I’ve always suspected there might be an element of blackmail in how she’s getting quite so much out of her ex-husbands.” Webster shrugs. “Don’t look at me like that, doesn’t everybody have that one relative?”

Joe has several slightly nutty aunts, uncles, and distant cousins but none of them are anything quite like that. “Sounds like you’re having a... uh... interesting time of it.”

Webster sighs. “The real annoyance is my mother is encouraging her by arranging lots of convenient encounters with appropriate young men.”

“Just men?” Webster is out to everyone in her campus social circle, even had a girlfriend for a short while in sophomore year, and it’s only just hitting Joe that that openness might not extend all the way back to New York.

“Yes. They know that I’m bi, but my mother just puts that down to college experimentation that I’ll get over once I’ve graduated,” Webster says breezily, “And my father… well he took my coming out better than he took me changing my major to literature, so that’s something.”

“You weren’t always majoring in literature?” Joe asks, because of all the revelations that’s the most startling.

Webster shakes her head, going a little blurry on camera, “I enrolled as a business student until the end of sophomore year because that’s what my parents were willing to pay for. I’d done paid internships both summers to make sure I’d have enough money if they took the change too badly, but in the end they just decided to pin their hopes on me following it up with law school.”

Joe stares at her. “Too badly? Did you really think they’d…?”

“-cut me off?” Webster finishes. “Not really, not entirely. They wouldn’t want the embarrassment for a start, but they certainly could have made my life a lot harder than I’m used to it being. And that was when I came out to them as well so…” Webster shrugs, and then laughs dismissively. Joe’s not sure how she can be so blasé about it – whatever other shit she’s had to deal with she’s never, ever doubted that her parents would have her back. Her mom had known she was gay since elementary school when she’d started to wonder about kissing girls and never even thought that it wouldn’t be okay to bring those questions to her mom; her dad had known since she started dating and had never batted an eyelid about it. "The worst of it is they keep trying to get me to tag along to garden parties and tennis matches, and I hate tennis," Webster says. “Though at least my having the internship this summer limits them to the weekends mostly.”

“You have an internship?” Joe asks. She thought that sort of thing was just for business and law students. Most of her friends are planning to live it up for the summer if they can afford it, or are doing basic paid work if they have to.

"I'm working with a shark charity," she explains. “For the PR department, helping with the fundraising campaigns and writing some of the informational campaigns the use to combat the anti-shark propaganda.”

Joe raises her eyebrows. “Anti-shark propaganda?” That’s a term she’s never heard before.

“Y’know, Jaw and all of those predator shows and certain parts of shark week,” Webster says. “All of those things that try and make people think sharks are vicious monsters and not important interested creatures.”

She can’t help but think it’s a bit of a stretch to call it propaganda, but Webster looks so serious and excited that she declines to argue. If this is going to be the highlight of Webster’s summer, and Joe’s starting to suspect that’s the case, then she doesn’t want to spoil it. “C’mon then,” Joe says, plumping up one of her pillows as she makes herself comfortable. “Debunk me some shark propaganda.”

 

***

 

Joe’s messy packing had screwed her over. It was inevitable really,  every summer there was something she couldn’t find, but she lived in hope. Hope that this time had been dashed. It’s not even something insignificant she’s misplaced, but her third favourite shirt - which has once been ranked first but slipped down the list because it’s softly fraying cuffs and almost worn through elbows placed limits on it’s versatility.

Even after going through the whole stack of clothes that she’s packed, and she really ought to fold them instead of keeping them in a heap but she... well actually she has no excuse she doesn’t want to, she still can’t find it. Odd, she likes that shirt and she’s sure she must have packed it even if she doesn’t remember.

She makes her way over to the laundry room where, helpfully, her mom is folding shirts. “Have you seen my shirt?”

Joe’s mom rolls her eyes, waving towards the large pile of shirts before her. “Which one?”

“The plaid one.” A pointed silence. That's reasonable. Fuck knows plaid is Joe's wardrobe staple. “The red and green one. The one Aunt Helen threatened to hide when we were on vacation the other year because she was sick of seeing me in it every single day.”

Her mom shakes her head and Joe sighs and discards the thought. Since her packing was as always an exercise in picking up possessions and then shoving them haphazardly into boxes or her case and then realising it wouldn’t shut and going through it again trying to figure out what else she could live without rather than trying to cram into her parents already overfull house, she’s utterly lost track of what came home and what went to storage. Clearly it must have been boxed up and she’ll get it back in the fall, it’s outside her control now.

 

***

 

The thinks about calling Webster on her birthday, it seems rude to say nothing after Webster acknowledged hers, even if Joe feels like the distance exempts her from gift giving. Instead she texts, but she’s not wholly surprised to receive a Skype call from Webster later that evening - it probably won’t last long, Webster most likely just thinks a spoken acknowledgement is more valuable than a texted one. She probably sends handwritten thank you cards out for actual presents.

Joe takes the call. From the look of the screen Webster is calling from her mobile. Joe can’t work out where she is though, the background is plain and she’s in heavy shadow.

"Happy birthday," she says anyway, and Webster's whole face brightens even though it’s the second set of birthday wishes she’s had from Joe that day, but she rolls her eyes when Joe adds, “Enjoying a rager now you can drink?”

"Like I haven't been drinking for years?" Webster says dryly, "And no, my parents have decided we'll be marking the occasion as a family."

Webster sounds annoyed but Joe has always enjoyed family celebrations. Then again, the picture Webster has painted of her parents is not exactly an impressive one.

“It can’t be that bad.”

"Unfortunately on this occasion my parents definition of family stretches to include half the neighbourhood and a variety of businesses contacts. I haven’t even completely unpacked yet and they’re trying to nudge me into networking and talking to ‘friends’ about what my plans for after graduation are."

She sounds more annoyed than anybody ought to be on their birthday. “Come on, if they’re throwing this party for you they must have invited some people there you’re really friends with.”

“They’ve invited a few people I used to hang out with at school. One of them has married her high school boyfriend and she’s just been telling me all about how she can’t wait to have a baby so that she can join the one million moms and support families for real.”

“Oh… shit,” Joe says. Joe is pretty sure she’d have hit anybody who started talking that nonsense with her, but no doubt Webster had exercised a little more restraint.

“So now I’m hiding in the cellar,” Webster finished. “Although at least there’s plenty of wine down here.”

That would certainly explain why she’d calling Joe from her birthday party. Still, there has to be somebody to keep her company. “You’ve got younger siblings, right?”

“Yeah,” Webster says, clipped, “But I… we aren’t close.” There’s a story there too, Joe suspects, but from her tone it’s not one that Webster wants to tell and Joe has no interest in prying it out of her if the subject makes her miserable. “I... the small talk is just so boring after having been free of it since Christmas and there’s really nobody up there I can _really_ talk to. Y’know, honestly. ”

Fuck it. If Webster wants to spend her birthday party getting wine drunk in a cellar and talking with Joe, then Joe will stay on the phone as long as it keeps her happy.

 

***

 

They fall fast back into the habit of watching movies together, often several nights a week now that neither of them have assignments demanding their time and there’s a small voice in Joe’s head that greedily reminds her that any time Webster is watching movies with Joe is time she can't be out having summer flings. Joe is quickly delighted to realise that the fact they’re limited to movies that both of them can find online seriously cuts into Webster’s ability to suggest weird old or dismally artsy films. Instead, Joe gets to embark on a mission to drag Webster into the wonders of popular culture.

“How can you have never seen Paranormal Activity?” Joe asks, incredulous. “I mean, it’s a modern classic. It’s practically art, you’re into that sort of thing.”

Web looks dubious. “Isn’t it just a cheap fake horror documentary?”

“Aren’t those films you made me watch just people sitting around in rooms or walking through fields being boring just fake real life?” Joe retorts.

As comebacks go it could use some work, but she counts it as a win because Webster says, “No! They’re about-” but then gives up and shakes her head, “You’re just going to keep arguing until I agree to watch it, aren’t you?”

Joe nods. If Webster had refused to watch it tonight she would have backed down, but she’d have kept suggesting it because frankly Webster really needs to diversify the sorts of films she watches.

“Okay fine,” Webster says, falling back against her pillows with a dramatic sigh.

"You should turn your lights out," Joe says, setting up the movie in the screen syncing website they’ve taken to using.  “It’ll be more atmospheric.”

Webster shakes her head. "I'm fine with the atmosphere I have."

“Whatever,” Joe says, and starts the movie playing.

It’s familiar by now, she knows it well enough that it’s comforting rather than suspenseful, but she lets herself get wrapped up in the story anyway. They  make it twenty minutes in before Joe has to yank her earbuds out in response to the startled shriek she hears. And it didn't come from the actress.

"Webster?" Joe says tentative, maximising the small window that shows Webster's webcam. Web has her hands pressed against her mouth, staring at the screen in wide eyed horror.

“I... wasn’t expecting that...” she says shakily, which goes to show how little Webster watches any sort of movie with action. The jumpscare was so telegraphed Joe had figured out it was coming five minutes in advance the first time she’d watched the movie.

After that she finds her gaze drifting over to the Skype window every few minutes, following the movie’s audio but watching Web’s reactions. She doesn’t scream again but the way she’s biting her lip makes Joe suspect she’s having to work to hold back, and she visibly jumps on more than one occasion, the camera going shaky as the laptop is jolted by her movements.

When the credits roll, Joe minimised the movie and brings Webster back to full screen. “So?”

“That was not art,” Webster says with a huff. “I can’t believe people would pay to see that, it was... it was...”

Joe laughs. “Oh c’mon, you must have enjoyed it a bit,” she says, “You were getting pretty into it from what I could see.”

“I was paying attention,” Webster says, “That doesn’t mean that it was good. Half of the acting was wooden and the rest was totally overwrought - were they really professional actors?”

Joe shakes her head, tutting. “It’s a genre convention. Shrieky heroines and overly stoic macho men are just a part of how horror movies are. You have to judge it for what it is, not like you would some emo drama.”

They talk for a while longer, Joe defending the art of a good scare while Webster makes noise about how there ought to be a deeper meaning, like everything should be a fable with a moral lesson at the end, until Joe looks over to the clock and realises it’s just past midnight. "I should probably say goodnight."

"Oh..." Webster sounds distressed. "Why? It's not that late in California."

"No, but it's late in New York," Joe points out, "Don't you want to sleep?"

At the lower edge of the frame Joe can see Webster wringing her hands. "I... Uh... No, I don't think I should sleep yet."

And suddenly it clicks for Joe - Webster's insistence on keeping her lights on for the film, her even tetchier than usual demeanour, her disinterest in sleep. "Shit Web, did that dumb movie freak you out that much?"

"Movies like that use known psychological tricks to increase tension and create a sense of unease and anticipation," Webster says, a thinly veiled version of a yes.

“I guess I could stay up a little longer,” Joe says, she hadn’t been planning to sleep right away anyway, had mostly just figured Web would want to go. “If you’re scared...?”

If she had to guess, Joe would expect Webster to go with her pride and decline the offer, but instead she holds out for only a few moments before she says, “Yes,” and “Could we please talk about anything else?”

Joe smiles. “Sure thing. How do you feel about slapstick comedy?”

 

***

 

Webster keeps letting Joe lead their selections although Joe keeps the potentially frightening picks to when they can talk during the daylight hours on weekends and even those are mild by her standards. Even those are enough to make Webster jumpy and wide-eyed in a way that has Joe quietly setting aside a few scary movies to talk Web into watching with her when they’re back in the dorms so that Joe can encourage Webster to curl up beside her for physical comfort.

They’re on Skype and deep in debate when her door crashes open.

“Hey, Josie! Are you busy? I need some help with my project,” Hannah says, walking right in “Oh, you’re just playing on the computer, c’mon then.”

“I’m not playing,” Joe protests, convincing Webster of the merits of Star Wars is serious business. Whatever idiot started her with the prequels should be shot. Then again, this science project does mean a lot to Hannah, even if she is massively annoying about it. “I just- Web, it’s my sister, I gotta go help rescue her science again…”

“Are you _talking to someone_?” Hannah says, and if she could run around a track as fast as she moves across Joe’s room as she says that then she’d be getting As in phys-ed instead of scraping a pity C from a teacher who doesn’t seem to have realised yet that Hannah writes all her own sick notes. “Hi, I’m Joe’s sister Hannah.” She waves, and Joe is about to mock her for it but Webster waves back. Great.

“Oh, hi Hannah,” Webster says, sounding justifiably alarmed. “I’ll let Joe get to helping you with your project – good luck, I’ll talk to you later Joe.”

Yeah, Joe’s gonna need good luck if the way Hannah is smirking as the call abruptly disconnects is any indication.

“Who’s that?” she says, flopping onto the ratty beanbag that Joe’s had in her room since middle school. “You’ve been on your computer for ages, have you been talking this whole time?”

“S’just Webster,” Joe dismisses. “What do you need for your project?”

Hannah laughs. “Nuh-uh. You’re not getting away with it that easily. What’s her first name, I don’t remember you mentioning a friend called Webster before, let alone one you’d talk to all summer. I’ve got plenty of time to work on the project.”

There’s no winning with Hannah, at best there’s the hope of avoiding the subject until she gets bored or distracted, but since annoying Joe is undoubtedly more interesting to her than the science project, that’s not a source of much hope to Joe.

“She’s a friend of a friend, she had DVDs of a few films I had to watch for class last semester, we started sharing movie recommendations, so I’ve been returning the favour.”

“Oh really?” Hannah says. “Somebody wants movie recommendations from _you_? You don’t have cool taste at all.”

“Do you want help with this project or not?” Joe threatens, and Hannah sighs but drops the topic. Though if Joe knows her sister, she knows it won’t rest for long.

 

***

 

Indeed, Hannah’s silence on the subject only lasts until dinner.

“How is your presentation coming along?” their mom asks.

“Fine,” Hannah says, “Joe even dragged herself away from her _girlfriend_ long enough to help me get all the poster boards properly stuck together.”

Their mom raises her eyebrows, pinning Joe with a look that quite clearly says, ‘ _If you run away from this table, young lady, it will be the last thing you do._ ’ “Oh?”

“Yeah, that’s why she’s been on her computer so much all summer,” Hannah continues, as if she’s not a) a gossipy little tell-tale and b) completely wrong. “She seemed nice though, she said ‘hi’ to me and wished me luck on my project too, and she’s pretty – like, Joe is batting _way_ out of her league pretty.”

“Hannah!” their mom scolds, “Don’t be mean. Your sister is a wonderful girl and anybody would be lucky to have her.”

“Ignore Hannah… it’s just Webster,” Joe protests. She doesn’t know why they’re making such a big deal of this, it’s not like Joe has never spoken to her college friends over the summer before, even if those were usually quick catch-up chats between Facebook updates, not the hours of discussion she shares with Webster. “She lives in my building and we have friends in common so we started hanging out. We’re not together.” At least not in the sense that Hannah is thinking of, although Joe isn’t sure her protests are going to hold up under her mom’s scrutiny. Her mom always did have a knack for seeing right through Joe when it came to this sort of thing, ever since seventh grade when Joe had come home one day complaining bitterly about Sarah Asher who was so pretty and so clever and had said Joe was smart for doing well on the algebra test in what was clearly a sneaky insult and an attempt to show off the fact Sarah scored a ninety-seven percent to Joe’s ninety-six, and Joe's mom had looked her dead in the eye and said, 'Wow, you really like this girl, don't you?'.

“You have been online an awful lot this summer,” Joe’s mom remarks, “You don’t normally keep in such close contact with your friends, are you sure that’s all she is?”

“I’m sure. She doesn’t like me like that,” Joe snaps, and only realises her slip when her mom’s expression softens. “I mean... we’re watching movies, so that’s like two hours minimum just for one. We aren’t talking for hours,” at least not all of the time, “Just hanging out.”

But Joe’s mom always did know when her children were lying to her.

 

***

 

Joe is curled up in the shade of the tree in the back yard, reading while she pretends she’s not waiting for the evening and Web to be done with her internship so they can skype, when Leah sits down beside her, craning her neck to get a look at Joe’s book.

“Is that…” Leah says, “That’s discworld isn’t it?” Her whole face lights up with excitement and she’s practically bouncing as she flings herself onto the couch beside Joe.

“You’ve read them?” she asks. Leah is the bookworm of the family, but it still seems like a strange coincidence.

“All the main ones, the library doesn’t have all of the companion books,” Leah pulls a face. “I’m having to borrow those off people I know and that’s a pain.”

“You know _other_ people who read them?”

Leah raises her eyebrows. “Uh, duh. They’re really famous, a bunch of them have been bestsellers. There were even comic versions of a few.”

“Huh...” Comics. If Web had opened with that Joe would have taken a lot less persuading. She makes a mental note to look them up sometime.

“How come you’re reading them? You hate books.”

“I don’t hate books,” Joe says. “And Webster made me read one, said I’d like them.”

“Oh,” Leah says, with a look that’s far more knowing than a twelve-year-old should ever be, “Your girlfriend, I see.”

Something in Joe’s chest tightens. “Web’s not my girlfriend,” she protests, but Leah’s not listening. Joe wishes somebody would - the more she hears it the easier it would be to believe the lie.

 

***

 

As they crawl into August and Joe is trapped inside by the heat, she starts making an effort to get her movie recommendations organised so that she isn’t just suggesting things at depending on her mood, putting together a watchlist of things Webster ought to see but probably hasn’t.

Unfortunately, she makes the error of being on the sitting room couch as she does so.

“Hey, is that Netflix?” Jacob says, and Daniel immediately leans over to see.

“How come you’ve got Netflix and we don’t?”

“You should share. Mom would tell you to share.”

“I’m using somebody else’s account,” Joe says, not that she owes them an explanation when they aren’t even supposed to be down there, “And Mom would tell you to get back to cleaning your room.”

“Somebody else’s account? Like stealing?”

“What are you a hacker now?”

Leah’s head pokes round the door. “Who’s a hacker?”

Joe sighs, suddenly stuck by the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose the way her father does. “Nobody’s a hacker Leah, your brothers just don’t understand the concept of sharing.”

“Well clearly neither do you if you won’t let us share the Netflix.”

“It’s not mine to share,” she repeats. “It’s Webster’s and she didn’t give me the details just so that you could use it to watch whatever shit you’ve found on that worst of netflix reddit.”

“Oooohhh,” Jacob says.

“It’s _girlfriend_ Netflix,” Daniel declares.

And then, in obnoxious unison that Joe knows they practise and isn’t just a twin thing, “Now we get it.” The way they’re smirking makes her want to throttle them, she’s not even sure what they’re implying, only that they’re certainly wrong.

 

***

 

Joe isn’t even sure whose idea the Lord of the Rings marathon was, but it’s one of the few series they agree on. It’s early evening as they get to the end of The Two Towers and Webster has been gradually sliding down the cushions for the past two hours, so that now she’s slumped in a heap at the bottom of the frame and all Joe can see is the top of her head and one of her eyes.

“You know you’ve got so comfy I can’t see you anymore,” Joe says and Webster sits up a little and Joe can see the collar of her shirt, green and red and -"Hang on, is that plaid?" Joe asks, she hadn’t noticed earlier, but Webster had vanished from her laptop to get comfy partway through the movie, apparently changing in the process. "Ha, do you have a secret stash of scruffy clothes at home?"

The quality of the video isn't great but Webster looks like she's blushing.

“You do don’t you?” Joe crows. “You have a secret love of plaid.”

"Shhhhhh,” Webster jokes, “It’s comfy okay, but it’s a secret. My mother wouldn't knowingly allow it in the house – she thinks it’s tacky."

“Oh yeah?”

“I can’t imagine how disappointed she’d be if she saw me in it. I can just imagine what she’d say, ‘You really should dress with self respect, Kenyon’,” Webster puts on a high, affectedly posh voice -as if she doesn’t realise her own natural manner of speak is already more than pretentious  enough- “‘You’re a lady not a lumberjack’.”

“Kenyon?”

“My mother has always called me by my middle name,” Webster remarks. “Davina is from my father’s side of the family, Kenyon is from hers.”

“Wait,” Joe says. Somehow every time Webster reveals something about her family Joe ends up wondering if all rich people are insane, or if Web was just unlucky. “Your middle name is Kenyon.”

“Yeah. Why, did you think it stood for something else?”

“Katherine?” Joe suggests, “Katelyn, Kirsten? I don’t know. Something more normal than Kenyon. Anyway, you’re weird family aside, do you want to keep watching?”

“It’s not that late,” Webster says, “And I have tomorrow morning off. We can finish the next one.”

It’s an ambitious suggestion, but Joe is a great believer in committing to marathoning movies and she likes that Webster is game for the long haul.

When it ends they start to talk it over and it’s revealed that while they both like the film, they have very different interpretations of the ending. Webster is three hours ahead and clearly fighting sleep to make her point despite the fact it’s wrong, her eyes drifting shut and her sentences punctuated with yawns, as she waves a hand and says, “It doesn’t matter… it’s the… it’s not subverting the trope if they change things u-” she yawns, “-up superficially, but the end result is the same.”

Joe’s not sure if she agrees, but she’s going to let it go because she loves Webster and if Joe carries on arguing Web is going to wind up falling asleep at her desk trying to keep up.

…

_Oh hell._

It’s a good thing Web is too close to sleep to be paying much attention, because Joe is paralysed by this realisation. She loves Webster.

She can’t unthink it, much as she’d like to, much as she’s like to brush it off as the sort of nonsense thought that a person sometimes has late at night, because it’s not that late, and it’s not nonsense. On the screen Webster yawns, doesn’t even bother to cover her mouth, her head tipping to rest on the chair’s back and it shouldn’t be cute, but she straightens up only to yawn again and Joe wants to be in New York, or better yet, have Web in San Francisco, where she can rest her weary head on Joe’s shoulder and Joe can wrap a blanket around her and promise her mom’s pancakes for breakfast in the morning.

Because Joe loves her, has been falling for a while despite her best efforts to the contrary, and now she’s screwed.

There’s two weeks left of summer vacation, and Joe’s going to have to get her head together fast.


	3. Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joe heads back to college and Webster, and everything is good but it’s still not enough.

There’s always something strange about arriving back on campus. It’s familiar, especially now when she’s moving in for the fourth time, and yet alien - this place that is and isn't her home. Joe applied to live in the same dorm building and got her preferred location which eases the transition, but the room she’s been assigned for senior year is central, unlike her last, which means she’s going to be getting other people’s noise from both sides, but at least she’s not on the ground floor where she’d have to deal with people constantly passing her window, or near the front where the smokers congregate which she only finds acceptable when she’s among them. She’s still somehow managed to end up sharing a bathroom with Skinny again, which is bizarre and improbable since there was no line on the form for that but at least she knows that she’s got somebody who won’t be a nuisance r hog the shower.

Her boxes of stuff arrive promptly and all in one go, nothing left behind or lost like the disaster in sophomore year when she’d been living out of her case until October, and as she’s unpacking Skinny knocks on her door with a smirk and lets Joe know that she has noise cancelling headphones this year.

It’s presumptuous, it’s obnoxious, and it’s apparently completely necessary because shortly after dinner Web turns up at her door, and as soon as Joe has let Web in she’s being kissed like she isn’t the only one who’s been waiting months for it.

Webster hands tangle in her hair and she keeps moving forward, walking Joe across the room until the door is swinging shut behind them both and Joe’s back hits the wall and Web just presses up against her and takes and takes, all that Joe can give to her even her breath, and that’s when Joe has to twist her head away, chest heaving as she remembers that she needs air.

“I... hi,” Webster says, and she starts to step back but Joe grabs her by the shirt. Nearly three months without touching Web is more than long enough. Over the summer she’d missed this, longed for it enough that she’d even thought, once or twice, about initiating something over Skype but Webster had never given her an easy opening and even if she had Joe would probably have had to turn it down due to the constant risk of interruption.

“No, no, that close is fine,” she assures Webster. She’d wondered if the fire between them might have cooled after a summer without anything to fuel it, but the way Webster slides her hands up Joe’s shirt suggests that things are as hot as they ever were.

They’re on the bed in minutes, Joe peeling her slightly sweaty jeans away while Webster just unzips her dress and steps out of with elegance. It’s strange seeing her like this, skin smooth and unmarked when in every encounter since their first she’d always borne fading marks of their time together. Every trace of Joe has faded away during the summer though, and she can’t fight the impulse to put her mouth to Webster’s throat and kiss down to her collarbone, reclaiming what she wishes were hers.

Joe hopes for Skinny’s sake that the other girl has already unpacked her fancy headphones because Joe has had weeks of listening to Webster talk but right now she wants to hear her moan.

It seems she’s not the only one eager for it, whatever summer flings Webster might have had they can’t left her very satisfied for her to be as eager for Joe as she is. Joe had made her bed neatly, a one off as part of the moving in process, but by the time they’re through the sheets are untucked and half her pillows have been knocked onto the floor. The sun sets late at this time of year, but it’s near to dark by the time they’re both sated, Webster limp with exhaustion and Joe almost trembling from the over stimulation. She waits for the familiar routine to fall back into place, for Webster to gather up the fancy clothes she wears like armour and rebuild the barrier between them like she always does.

Instead, Webster stays. It’s a tight fit with the pair of them in the narrow twin, but Webster rolls onto her side and makes no fuss about being trapped between Joe and the wall, just wraps the top sheet around herself as she uses one hand to finger comb her hair back into something resembling the style it had been in before Joe had got her hands in it.

When she’s done she slides her hand across to swipe Joe’s own hair back, then bites her lip, looks at Joe with wide earnest eyes as she says, “Joe, you and I, we're-”

No. Joe doesn't want to hear this, is in too good of a mood to let Webster ruin things between them with reality, so she quiets her with a kiss. “We’re good together,” she whispers against Web’s lips when they finally break apart. She just wishes that was the only thing that mattered.

After all those nights of talking until the time difference dragged Webster to sleep it feels like the most natural thing in the world when she wraps herself around Joe instead of getting up. It's still a tight fit, the pair of them in a twin bed, no way to fit without being pressed together and Webster's hair tickles where it brushes up against her, but none of those little inconveniences are enough to keep Joe from sinking into a deep, peaceful sleep.

 

***

 

Once again Joe wakes first, even though she’d expected the jetlag to put her at a disadvantage. She’s in no hurry to extricate herself or wake Webster this time, but she does need to do something about the way Webster’s hair has got everywhere in the night. She brushes stray strands off herself, then reaches out for the ones that have fallen across Webster’s fave. She feels Webster stir, and starts to sit up but Web wraps arm arm tight around her.

“Lieb,” she grumbles, eyes still shut, and if there’s another syllable there -and there must be, because Webster would know the implications of dropping it- it’s lost as she presses her lips to Joe’s once again. They make out as the sun streams in through the gap in the curtains, the beams drifting across the room as it rises and Joe keeps waiting for the end but even when Web finally pulls back she doesn’t make her usual excuses, doesn’t flee, just runs her hands through her curls and says, “Urgh, I still feel like airplane germs are all over me, is it okay if I use your shower?”

It’s so far from what Joe  has come to expect from Webster but she nods and moves out of the way on instinct. “Sure, just make sure the adjoining door is locked so you don’t scare the shit out of Skinny.”

And Webster doesn’t go pale at the suggestion of being caught with Joe, just laughs and swings her feet off the bed. “Yeah,” she says, stretching her arms over her head. “It’s too early for that.”

She’s not hiding anything as she walks across the room and Joe can’t be content with watching her leave, can’t stand her absence when the option of following is right there and so she rolls out of the bed, skirting around still packed boxes until she opens the bathroom door and crosses to the shower. She pushes the curtain to one side, and Webster doesn’t seem surprised to be joined as Joe steps under the spray and "Jesus fucking christ! That's freezing! What the hell?"

She steps out of the spray sharpish, staring at Web in horror, but Webster just shrugs. "It's not _that_ cold,” she says, which may in fact be the wildest lie Joe has ever heard. “And anyway showering in cool water is better for your hair and skin, and the environment."

"What the fuck?" Joe reaches past her, turning the temperature dial up. She doesn't crank it as high as she likes it, because if Webster is genuinely used to taking her showers icy she'd probably burn under Joe's preferred water temperature of as close to scalding as safely possible, but she settles it a safe lukewarm midpoint that still feels a little chilly to her when she steps back under the spray, but is much improved from Web's cold enough to be considered torture in some places temperature. "That's crazy. Your hair and skin are both fine, you should be more worried about getting sick from freezing yourself."

"You can't get sick just from being cold," Webster protests. "And I've been doing it for years."

"Being cold makes your immune system weaker," Joe counteracts, wrapping an arm around Webster's chest and pressing herself along Webster's back. "And really, you haven't enjoyed a hot shower in years? That's depressing. No wonder you're always so quick about them if you're making them awful."

"I have hot baths when I'm visiting home,” Webster says, like that might make this terrible discovery okay.

Joe hooks her chin over Webster's shoulder and tuts. "That's only once a term. Also not the same thing."

“Is there a reason you’re gate-crashing my shower?” Webster deflects.

“Firstly, it’s my shower you’re just using it, and secondly I was aiming for a quick round of morning sex but now I’m too cold, so I’m just going to stay here and supervise so you don’t turn the temperature back down and give yourself hypothermia or frostbite or something.”

“I don’t need supervising,” Webster says, “And don’t be a drama queen.”

“Fuck you,” Joe says, flicking the spray towards her face.

Webster just rolls her eyes, “I thought you were too cold,” she says, “Make your damn mind up.”

 

***

 

She would have put that little incident down the exhaustion and chaos of moving in day but less than a week later she’s waking up wrapped around Webster again.

Joe doesn’t have any class assignments she’d need Web’s help with this semester but since Webster thinks Joe’s film knowledge is a lacking as Joe knows Web’s is it had seemed obvious to agree to keep up their old routine while trading off between classic pop culture and the most bizarre arthouse shit that Webster seems to dig up from who only knew where and then they’d fucked and it had been the easiest thing in the world to fall asleep still curled around one another in the mess they’d made of Joe’s bed.

Once again Joe wakes first. She’d never considered herself to be a morning person but now that Web doesn’t seem so freaked out by the prospect of waking up with Joe, she reveals herself as a terrible layabout who responds to Joe opening the curtains by pulling the blankets up over her head and rolling over until she’s pressed up against the wall with her back to Joe.

“‘s too early,” Webster grumbles, wrapping her arms around the pillow.

“You’re already awake,” Joe argues as she dresses. “So you might as well get the rest of the way up and come to breakfast.”

Webster opens one eye. “With you?”

“I want coffee,” Joe says. “And I’m not eating eggs that have been sitting under heat lamps for hours, so you need to get up.”

For a moment Webster looks suspicious, but slowly she rolls to the edge of the bed and sits up. “I can’t go to breakfast in yesterday’s clothes,” she says.

Joe rolls her eyes. She does exactly that on a regular basis, but it would be out of character for Web and she supposes they don’t want to draw suspicion.

“I can meet you by the front door,” she suggests. “Just... don’t spend forever on your hair.”

Webster pulls a face but ten minutes later she's joining Joe at the front door. That’s five times more than Joe would have needed, but impressively quick for Webster to transform from a sleepy mess into looking like she’s stepped out of a magazine. Joe never really like how Web looks in the mornings, it’s too perfect and it makes her seem unreal - she’s prettiest at the end of the day, when she’s a little ruffled looking and more natural.

The dining hall is quiet that early in the morning on a saturday, most people will skip or stagger in thirty minutes before closing for rubbery eggs or cereal served with milk that’s been out so long it’s hit room temperature.

She gets her eggs and toast, and Webster joins her at the table with a mug of coffee in each hand - the second one she relinquishes to Joe somewhat reluctantly, before turning all of her attention to her own.

While Webster communes with her source of life, Joe finds her gaze wandering to a pair of students two tables over, Joe is guessing sophomore sweethearts reuniting based on the theatricality of their display, their arms are wrapped around each other, pressed so close they're practically on top of each other.

Parly she’s disgusted, because she’s no prude but she doesn’t want to see other people putting their tongues in each others mouths while she’s eating, but there’s also a twisting note of envy - her reunion with Webster had been more than she’d dared to dream but it had still been in the privacy of her dorm, she couldn’t be shameless with her.

Everything about the excessively amourous displace annoys her. “Urgh...” she complains as she stirs sugar into her coffee. “What’s wrong with people who are so clingy they can't keep their hands off each other for long enough to get a coffee? I mean they're putting people off their food.”

Webster squints at Joe, an expression that makes it obvious that despite her efforts to appear awake and put together she’s still half asleep, and Joe jerks her head in the direction of the obnoxious couple.

Rather than been subtle about checking them out, Web turns her head and stares at them in open confusion. Fortunately they’re too wrapped up in each other to notice. Her brow furrows as she glances back at Joe and then she nods slowly. "I guess it is sort of unnecessary. Performative..."

Joe rolls her eyes. “How can you be about five seconds away from spooning salt into your coffee and still be at it with SAT words?”

“Performative isn’t on the official SAT vocabulary list,” Webster says, and Joe realises with a sudden onset of fond exasperation that Web had probably been the sort of student who got a copy of the list and studied it despite knowing most of the words already. “And there isn’t even salt on the table.”

“I was joking,” Joe explains. “How long does it take coffee to start impacting on you? Should I just leave you be until then?”

“Effects of caffeine vary,” Webster says, taking a sip and then screwing up her face. “And this dining hall coffee is terrible.”

 

***

 

Something fundamental has changed, and it goes Joe realising that her feelings for Webster far exceed the simple lust they had begun as.

but now Webster seems to be everywhere and despite Joe reeling at how Webster has slipped into her life everybody else acts like she belongs. Although they had always shared friends Joe is certain they never had this much social overlap before - it leaves her little room to distance herself from her feelings, not that she’s certain she would be willing to even if she were able. She might want more than what she has, but the thought of breaking off entirely from Webster makes her gut twist unpleasantly and so her only option is to act like it’s normal for Webster and her to be hanging out with their mutual friends at the same time and only bickering a little.

Worse still are the times they run into each other around campus and in crowded corridors or queues Webster's hand will brush against Joe's and she can’t help thinking that it would be so easy to just grab it, but the casual touches that seem so natural when they're curled up on one of their beds are still so impossible in the light of day.

She finds herself incapable of resisting the urge to risk stealing moments of affection, even when they’re at risk of being caught. Joe has still been careful to avoid bringing their arrangement to the attention of any of their friends other than Skinny, who politely ignores them save a few eyerolls, and she assumes Web is equally discreet or she would have heard about it by now.

Still she can’t resist drifting in Web’s direction every time their paths cross, from fleeting encounters in the dorm corridors to diversions between classes.

Joe had been walked with Shifty from her bio class to the computer centre in search of a colour printer that was actually working when they’d run into Skinny and Webster coming from the computer centre to the arts building and Skinny and Shifty had been diverted by, of all things, the new solar powered binned.

They’ve only got a moment before Skinny and Shifty come back but that’s all she needs. Web is in the hideously high heeled boots that Joe hates because Webster doesn’t need any help in that department, so it’s her own fault if her shirt gets creased by Joe grabbing her by the collar to pull her down for a kiss.

“Wanna get dinner later?” Joe asks when they part.

“My last class ends at six,” Webster says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “The dining hall or someplace else?”

“Someplace else,” Joe says. Having spent the summer at home eating her mom’s cooking makes it harder to ignore how terrible dining hall food is. “I don’t mind where.”

“Trish was talking about that new place that way like Subway but for Mexican food,” Webster suggests. “Apparently it’s better than it sounds.”

“Meet me by the library,” Joe suggests. It’s a convenient midpoint between the English building and their dorm. Then, despite knowing the Skinny and Shifty could be back any second, she leans up to steal another kiss, just a quick brush of the lips before she’s putting a socially acceptable amount of space between them so that they can keep pretending everything is as it was.

It’s only seconds later that Skinny and Shifty rejoin them and Joe tells herself that she’s doing a good job of acting like nothing of note happened in their absence but as Webster walks away Skinny doubles back and frowns at Joe. “Are you wearing lipstick?”

“What? No,” Joe scoffs, resisting the urge to swipe at her mouth. Webster had been wearing a deep cherry red colour, but Joe couldn’t remember ever having had a problem with it transferring before. “It’s probably just stained from whatever colouring they put in that cheap raspberry soda,” she suggests.

Skinny raises her eyebrows, then looks knowingly from Joe to Web.

“Right... soda. Hope you recycled the can,” she says, the jobs to catch up with Web.

Shifty seems to be politely pretending that the conversation isn’t happening, but as they walk towards the computer lab Joe pulls out her phone, surreptitiously using the camera as a mirror, and yes there’s a faint smudge of pink on her lower lip, the colour that Webster was wearing.

 

***

Whereas before Joe’s room was always the primary setting for the encounters, Webster leaving and retreating to her own space once she had what she wanted from Joe, now they tend to be distributed more evenly and they’re in Webster’s room this time, which is once again decorated better than any dorm has the right to be.

The film is some french thing that Joe had complained about at first, because if Webster was going to insist on watching artsy foreign language shit she could at least pick something in German so they didn’t have to fuck about with subtitles, but she’d got pretty into it after finding out it also involved a killer whale that bites somebody's legs off and an underground fighting ring.

Still, when the credits start rolling she’s eager to follow it up by sliding her hands up under Webster’s shirt, but she yawn, batting Joe’s hands away. “Don’t bother, I think I’d just fall asleep on you, honestly,” she says, “It’s been a long day.”

“That’s cool,” Joe says, getting up, because okay she’d kind of been expecting to hook up with Webster but it’s not like she’s entitled to sex. “I’ll see you-”

“You could stay though,” Webster interjects. “I mean, we could talk and you could just sleep here. If you wanted.”

Joe swallows. It's not good for her sanity, this thing they've been doing of late where they're almost domestic, Joe's subconscious is getting all sorts of funny ideas. She ought to ease up a little, stop taking advantage of every opportunity to be close to Web and start treating this as the casual fling it is. She won't though. Joe's mom always had said that her firstborn had a whole load of sense but no inclination to use it.

“Uh... sure.” She says, because she’s already being stupid with Web so why not go the whole way.

Webster sits up, the drags herself off the bed. “Make yourself comfortable. I just need to take my make-up off properly,” she says, crossing towards the bathroom, “And you know, pajamas.”

“Uh... I don’t have pajamas,” Joe realises suddenly.

“Do you even wear pajamas?” Webster says, “I’ve never seen you in any.”

“I’ve never seen you in any either,” Joe points out.

“Well we’re usually in your room,” Webster points out. “I don’t have any there.”

“Point,” Joe says, and still has just enough sense left in her to bite her tongue and not do anything hideously stupid like offer Web some drawer space.

While Webster is out Joe shimmies out of her jeans and pulls her bra out of the sleeve of her t-shirt. Part of her says the sensible thing to do would be to get fully undressed, she’s not got anything Webster hasn’t seen or even had her mouth on before, but without Webster similarly exposed it would just feel odd. Normally she’d just toss her clothes onto an approximate heap of laundry once she’s undressed, but there is no mess at all on Webster floor so instead Joe folds her clothes and is just putting them on the desk when Webster walks back in.

“Huh,” Joe says. “Your pajamas have fish on them.”

“They’re _sharks_ ,” Webster corrects, as serious as Joe has ever heard her be. She looks comfortable as she joins Joe on the bed, Joe thinks, and more unguarded than even when she’d been nude and even if what’s between them isn’t important, this trust is and Joe savours it.

 

***

 

It starts to seem like they’re falling into bed with each other almost constantly, and not just for sex.

At least once a week Joe will find her enjoying the same sorts of slow lazy film nights they’d enjoyed on Skype except with all of the aching distance erased. It’s easy, feels natural, and while she’s honestly she’s not sure what Web makes of Joe shamelessly using her tits as a pillow, it’s comfier to lean on Webster than it is to try and squish in next to her.

She’s not complaining or anything, just her fingers through Joe’s hair. The movement itself felt nice, but it was kind of distracting.

“Having fun with my hair?” she teases.

“It’s so soft,” Webster marvels, “Before, I always assumed you used a lot of gel to get it to look this good, but no, it’s all natural, isn’t it?”

“Hell yeah, I wake up like this,” Joe says smugly, then she realises something.

Webster is talking. While the movie is playing.

A glance at the laptop shows that the actors are still pacing back and forth and droning on, but Web doesn’t seem to be paying it the slightest bit of attention.

Joe tips her head back to look at Webster, and sure enough the other girl’s eyes aren’t on the screen, she’s looking at Joe.

"Web,” she asks slowly. “Do you even like this movie?"

Webster rolls her eyes. "It symbolises an important cultural turning point," she starts, but oh, Joe knows what it means when Webster falls back on talking like that.

"Yeah,” she interrupts, “But are you actually enjoying watching it?"

Webster pauses, sighs, and then flops back against the wall, sullen.

Joe grins. "You hate it don't you? One of the most prestigious films of the last fifty years and you think it's rubbish!"

"I respect the place it has in film history..."

Joe could enjoy listening to Webster try and bullshit a defence of something even she can’t stand but instead she leans in and she can almost see the battle going on in Web's mind as she coaxes, "C'mon spill."

"I... it's..." Webster shakes her head, chewing on her lower lip for a moment before she finally snaps. "It's overly sentimental, the acting is wooden, and the writers are clearly just rehashing the most popular plot points from their earlier productions without bothering to consider the story as a cohesive whole!"

"I know!" Joe says, "It's terrible. I can't believe you made me watch it."

Web pulls a face. "I'd always heard it was phenomenal, but now I'm questioning so many people's taste. I can't believe so many could sit through nearly three hours watching that."

"Don't worry," Joe says, rolling over and dropping a quick kiss to Webster's pouting lips. "I've got some ideas about how you can make it up to me."

 

***

 

Just when she thinks her life couldn’t get any more surreal Webster turns to her one night when they’re laying in bed together, Joe idly trying to decide if she should initiate more sex or get some sleep and actually pay attention in her 8am lecture this morning, and asks, “Who is your favourite superhero?”

Joe stares at her.

Webster gazes back at her with wide guileless eyes.

Joe could talk for hours about the different ages and adaptations, but she also knows that sitting through the blockbuster cinema versions of the Avengers over the summer had already stretched Webster’s limits and those were a mainstream as comic culture got so she says, “Well, Batman is a classic, and I’ve always liked the Flash, even before that TV series made him cool again, but if I had to pick just one? Wonder Woman.” She waves in the direction of her poster collection, in which Wonder Woman features prominently. “I’m going to make you watch the movie when it comes out and you _will_ like it,” even if Joe has to put her arguments in essay format to appeal to Webster’s sensibilities, “But it was the TV show that was formative for me, my mom had the whole series on VHS and I used to watch them with her, that was how I got into the comics.”

“So is that a better route in than reading them?” Webster asks. “I mean, I can see just from your posters there’s so many versions. Surely it’s hard to follow?”

Joe raises her eyebrows. “Since when are you interesting in reading comics?”

Webster shrugs. “Hey, you liked Pratchett a lot more than you expected, maybe I’ve been underestimating comics this whole time,” she suggests, “I mean if you like them so much, they must have some merit.”

Joe goggles. Webster has fought almost tooth and nail to poke holes in nearly every film recommendation Joe has made to her and is now claiming to trust her judgement? It’s madness. But  she’s indulged crazier whims. “It can be pretty confusing if you don’t know what you’re looking for, I could lend you a few issues to get you started if you’re that curious though,” she offers, “Hell, the way you read they shouldn’t take you long at all to get through.”

And Web smiles like she actually appreciates the offer, even though Joe had always suspected that Webster held a certain degree of disdain for the medium was too committed to a facade of politeness to say so outright.

 

***

 

Just as their routine of intimacy is starting to grow familiar, Webster disappears. Joe catches glimpses of her in the halls still, sees her leaving breakfast as Joe is arriving and arriving at dinner as she’s leaving, but she doesn’t seem to be socialising anymore, and part of Joe thinks she should just let it go, but when she sees J.J eating dinner with Webster one day and then runs into her in the corridor the next afternoon she can’t resist her curiosity.

J.J parties hard and Joe has never quite understood how she and Webster are such good friends, but if they’re eating meals together it stands to reason that J.J might have information she doesn’t, so she asks, “Have you seen Webster?”

J.J looks at her dubiously. “We’re two weeks from midterms. She’ll have gone into study hermit mode, same as she always does. Unless whatever you want to see her about is going to improve her grades then it’s just going to have to wait until exams are over.”

Right, Joe should have seen that coming. She supposes that she’d expected Webster to tell her, but it’s not like they have fixed plans to cancel.

Still, she finds herself making her way down the downstairs corridor and knocking on Webster's door. There's no answer. She waits a few moments then knocks again, this time without stopping, just a continuous rat-at-at-tat of knuckles against wood. There's still no answer.

"Web, it's me," she calls out, "Open the fuck up."

For a second the silence continues, and she hears the sound of rapid movements before Webster's voice calls out, "It's not locked."

Joe takes the hint and lets herself in, surveying the room. The bed is unmade; there's a tower of paper coffee cups stacked precariously next to the nightstand; and, Joe inhales deeply, the window is cracked open letting in a draft of cool air and Joe knows that if she looks out of it she's sure to see a pile of cigarette ends.

Webster is sprawled on her bed wearing a creased t-shirt and sweatpants. Joe blinks, shakes her head and looks again, but no, she saw right the first time. Web. In sweatpants. Joe wouldn’t have guessed she’d even own sweatpants. Joe is deeply attached to all kinds of baggy, shapeless but comfortable clothing, but even though Webster goes to the gym twice a week (although why Joe doesn’t know, since she’s given every sign of hating it) she does so in form-fitting designer sportswear.

The draft from the window is pretty chilly and Joe doesn’t know how Web has been sitting there in short sleeves because she doesn’t look cold but she does look settled in half buried until notepads and textbooks.

“Are you studying from the books or trying to bury yourself in them?” she asks. Joe’s seen a lot of exam-stress eccentricity over the years but some of those stacks look legitimately perilous.

“No, things just got out of hand,” Webster says. “Although I always did think it would be nice to lie down in a pile of paper fresh out of the printer when it's all warm.”

Yeah, she’s definitely been studying way too long. “I think most people go with laundry fresh out of the dryer,” Joe says, “But I get the sentiment.”

Webster sighs. “This american lit course is kicking my ass. The professor is in love with the Beats and embraces all of the macho bullshit side of it while skipping over the best parts of Ginsberg and in every essay I just want to point out that Kerouac doesn’t need glorification he needed a fucking editor but I can’t because he’s prick who’s mark me down for disagreeing with him. And my goddamn pen has run out of ink,” she waves the pen in her hand and Joe raises her eyebrows. There are two pens jammed into the elastic of Web’s ponytail and another tucked behind her ear, but Webster looks like she might not handle it well if Joe pointed that out to her. Instead, she reaches into her own pocket, fishing around until she produces a cheap ballpoint. The end is slightly chewed, but Webster is in no position to get squeamish about a little of Joe’s spit.

Web takes it like Joe is handing her a bar of solid gold. “Lieb, do you ever worry that you’re going to fail everything horribly and have to drop out with all of the debt of three years of college but no degree?” she asks.

_Jesus._ Joe cross the room and begin clearing herself a space on the bed. “No because that’s completely stupid,” she says. “Anybody who’s made is this far clearly has the skills, senior year isn’t really any harder than any of the others. Web, when did you last take a study break?”

“I... midterms,” Webster says, which means way too long ago and possibly never.

“Right,” Joe says, reclaiming her pen. “Get dressed. The cinema in town is showing a Hitchcock marathon and you need to get out of here for a while.”

“Hitchcock?”

“Yeah,” Joe says, plan solidifying in her mind. “So you can enjoy all that artsy shit and hold my hand during the scary parts.”

 

***

 

The Hitchcock marathon is a success and so a few days later Joe makes sure to interrupt Web’s studies again with plans for another scary movie so that Webster can direct her ongoing freakout at something other than her studies.

Instead, she discovers that the only ‘scary’ movie that fails to frighten Webster is Jaws. Jaws fills her with rage. Joe supposes it’s not such a shock, given the subject of Webster’s summer internship, but it’s still surreal to watch Web rant and seeth and curse Steven Spielberg’s name as if the man had created the idea of sharks as a threat instead of just tapping into a prejudice that was always there.

At first Joe is of a mind to argue with her, to push and challenge in the way she doesn’t whenever Webster gets started on her rants about movies, but then she sees the way Webster’s eyes flash. There’s a fire there, a real burning passion, like she’d be ready to fight for them if she has too and instead she kisses her, pushes her to the bed and tries to steal a little of that furor for herself.

And oh they are hot together.

It’s blemished only by  the way Webster pulls away whenever Joe does anything that might leave a mark, and is reticent about her reasons. “I have a… thing,” Webster says, and Joe doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean. Is this thing another hookup who doesn’t want to see Joe’s marks on Webster, or who Web doesn’t want to know about Joe? Is it some new found distaste for being marked in general?

It unsettles her but this thing between them feels to fragile and she knows that if she pushes it might all come crumbling down

 

***

 

There are few things worse than last minute exam revision.

One of them is last minute exam revision when you discovered with forty-eight hours to go that you’d somehow managed to miss the single line on the back of a syllabus you hadn’t realised was double sided that lists a textbook full of required reading that will _definitely_ be on the exam.

And that’s how Joe ends up breaking form and camping out on the fourth floor of the library in the midst of the pre-mid-term chaos. Joe much prefers studying in the peace and quiet of her room, if she has to study at all, but the only copies of the book available are those in the heavy demand section that are forbidden from being removed from the library. So she’s been trapped in with hundreds of other frazzled students, picking up their stress by osmosis since seven am.

Things had finally started to quiet down at around midnight as the crowds of freshmen who were there more due to jitters about their first college exams than a need to study has begun to dissipate. Now it’s mostly quiet, except for the patter of hail against the windows and the turning of pages and tapping of keys by people as desperate as Joe is, and she’s got enough room to spread her laptop and notes out across the whole table. She could even go down to the ground floor and refill her water bottle without having to worry about somebody trying to steal her seat – though she isn’t going to because she’s pretty sure that if she lets herself take even a short break from studying she’s going to totally lose her place and never be able to find again.

She’s nearly done with her notes on the eleventh chapter, when a shadow falls over her as somebody pulls out the chair next to hers. “I’m working here. Half of the desks on the floor are empty so fuck off to one of them,” she snaps.

A cardboard coffee cup slides into her field of vision. She looks up.

It’s Webster, coat collar flipped up and hair damp and windswept, more dishevelled than Joe has ever seen her in public before.

Joe takes the mug, sips and is surprised by the taste of chocolate. “This isn’t coffee,” she says, perplexed.

Webster shakes her head, shedding droplets of water as she does so. “I think you’ve been caffeinated enough for one day,” she answers, as if there’s even such a thing. “I ran into Skinny on my way back from study group and she said you’ve been here all day.”

Joe scowls. “I’ve got to finish this book for my software exam,” she explains. “I have five chapters to go, and the exam is,” she glances at her watch display, reading 01:17, “Just under thirty-one hours from now. Fuck.”

Webster lays a hand on Joe’s arm. “It’s not going to help if you wreck your sleep schedule and go into the exam exhausted.”

“I missed a whole book off of the required reading,” she repeats, because surely Webster, who never misses so much as an optional reading, understands how much of a disaster this is.

“Joe… Joe, it’s just a midterm,” she says, and Joe turns back to stare at her, because Webster has been studying for weeks already, occasionally chain-smoking out of her dorm window as she cussed out Dickens, Faulkner and Kerouac with unprecedented ferocity. “It’s only a quarter of your grade, and I know you aced your essay and you know the rest of the material inside out. You’ll be fine.”

“I need to finish this reading,” Joe insists, even though the world must have gone mad for her to be the one pushing Webster for more reading. “I only have five chapters to go.”

“I know but Lieb, c’mon,” Webster implores, “You need to rest.”

And she’s powerless then, even though she knows that Webster doesn’t think about the double meaning it holds, that version of her name in Webster’s mouth still makes her knees go weak. “I… once I’ve finished this chapter,” she concedes, taking another sip of the hot chocolate. Now that she’s not expecting it to be coffee it tastes good, thick and creamy, and there’s another flavour mixed in with the chocolate, ginger maybe, but she’s too tired to tell.

“How far into this chapter are you?” Webster asks, which isn’t so surprising. Joe envisions Webster as the sort of person who learned every trick to read more as a child, ‘just let me finish chapter ten’ while on chapter five of a ten chapter book, and other such sneaky methods.

“I have,” Joe checks quickly, “Five pages left. I’ll be half an hour tops.”

“Okay, half an hour,” Webster says, but she doesn’t leave.

Joe raises her eyebrows. “Half an hour,” she repeats, “I promise,” she makes a shoo-ing gesture in Webster’s direction, something Joe’s mother would yell at her for, but she doesn’t need Webster to hover around and make sure she sticks to this new limit.

“Sure,” Webster says, “I have my international lit notes on my phone, so I’m going to over them while you take your half hour to finish, and then I’m going to walk you home.”

Joe doesn’t need supervising, she might be tired but she isn’t about to walk out into traffic or anything, but when she opens her mouth to protest Webster taps at her wrist as if indicating to an imaginary watch and adds, “Half an hour, clock is ticking,” so Joe just sticks out her tongue then goes back to her notes.

Surprisingly, Webster’s presence isn’t a distraction. Having a deadline and an incentive which isn’t her dreaded exam makes it easier to focus, gives her tangible motivation. She’d thought getting through the chapter would be a struggle but  time seems to fly until she scribbles down a final line of notes, and honestly it’s not the most thorough bit of reading she’s ever done, but it’s been twenty-five minutes and she promised. She caps her pen, shuts her notebook and turns to let Web know she’s done.

Webster’s head is lolling forward inelegantly, chin resting against her chest, her eyes shut and her lips slightly parted, breathing slow and even. “Oh, Web…” Joe whispers, smoothing her hair away from her face. She packs up the last of her stuff, puts the book she’s been using back on the shelf, then shakes Webster’s shoulder slightly. “Webster,” she murmurs, and then, just because Webster probably won’t remember it, “Mein Schatz.” Webster’s eyelashes flutter as she lifts her head. “C’mon, time to go home.”

 

***

 

The first morning after midterms are over, Joe wakes slowly, savouring the thought of a lazy morning with no worries of getting up in time for an exam or to cram in some last minute revision. The first rays of the late rising sun are creeping in through the crack in her curtains and her blankets are warm and smell laundry fresh even though she’d actually just sprayed the hell out of them with febreeze. Even the noise from the hallway is more of a gentle hum than an annoying racket.

She stretches out her shoulders and rolls over, then freezes are she realises the sheets are cold beside her.

Webster isn’t there.

It takes her a brief confused moment to remember that for all the Web had become a regular occupant since the start of the semester and turned up in Joe’s bed nearly every night of the exam period seeking comfort and distraction she still had her own room and belonged there are not with Joe.

Joe sits up, stretches and yawns. The sun is still rising and her blankets are cozy, the noise just the same as it was moments ago, but the comfortable feeling that had enveloped her is gone.

Somewhere along the line she’s become a little too used to not waking up alone.

 

***

 

It’s not that Joe dislikes Halloween, she appreciates the opportunity to go a little wild in the aftermath of midterms just as much as the next person, it’s just that it always sneaks up on her and she never had the time or the money to invest in any sort of elaborate costume, even if she had the creativity for anything fancy.

She’s dug into the back of her closet and pulled out a suit she owns for ‘just in case’, borrowed herself a tie, and earlier that afternoon rummaged through thrift stores and managed to find a fedora (not a trilby) and a toy gun. She’d been playing with putting on an old New York Gangster style accent earlier, but she couldn’t get through more than a couple of words with breaking it or laughing.

Old school gangster isn’t that imaginative, but fortunately, she’s been joined at the table she’s snagged by Skinny, who is her ally in the lazy costumes club, dressed in a black shirt and leggings with a pair of cat ears and some face-paint whiskers. They’ve got a couple of beers in and are making a bit of a game of rating the costumes of the other patrons which range from the desperately lazy in the form of Skip and Penkala dressing as each other like they don’t practically share a wardrobe anyway to somebody in an scarily accurate looking plague doctor outfit who was going around the bar scaring the shit out of people.

Joe is just speculating who is it dressed up like that, and how they’re going to drink with the mask on, when Skinny shushes her.

“Hold up,” she says, leaning to one side and waving over Joe’s shoulder. “Hey, Web – over here!”

Joe turns in her seat. “Finally. I wondered when she was going to get he-…uh…fuck...”

Joe had figured Webster would go simple with her costume, call dressing up childish, but apparently she’s read Webster all wrong because there is no mistaking what Web is wearing for anything other than a Wonder Woman outfit.

It’s... it’s...

Skinny leans across the table to pokes her. "Um… Joe? You might wanna shut your mouth before you start actually drooling."

Joe gulps. Webster has gone classic, more Lynda Carter than Gal Gadot, and maybe it ought to be funny, the cheesy 70s look of it, but all Joe can see is Webster's legs looking impossibly long in those bright red boots and tiny shorts (hell, they might not even class as shorts they cover so little), and the way the red and gold top displays her ample cleavage, complete with a bitemark that's faded enough to look like any innocuous bruise but that Joe so vividly remembers putting there.

She tries to pull herself together as Webster walks over to their table, but when she slips into the seat opposite Joe instead of greeting her Joe just blurts out, "Wonder woman…" like those are the only words she can remember.

Webster grins, sheepish, and tugs the costume's bodice up a little - though all that really achieves is drawing attention to her chest, as if it's not already hard enough for Joe to keep from gaping like she's never seen boobs before. "Yeah, I… I read those volumes you lent me, they were pretty interesting and I... well I guess it inspired me when the time to start planning my costume came around."

"That's not the costume for the current run of comics," Joe says, and then cringes because that sounds like she's pulling some fake geek girl bullshit on Webster. "I mean… It's styled more like the T.V adaptation or the 1980's comics run, which you haven't seen, but it works!"

"Yeah, well I liked the character but the outfit from the comics looked really impractical,” because nothing said practical like star-spangled short-shorts and a red and gold bustier, “And the costume versions of that I found weren't very good, and I recognised this version from your posters so I figured it would work okay."

Okay, so Webster is _knowingly and deliberately_ dressed up like the posters on Joe's wall and the woman responsible for her sexual awakening; that's just desperately unfair. "It works okay," Joe says, and kicks Skinny under the table – she needs some support here.

"You aren't going to have to buy any of your own drinks tonight, that's for sure," Skinny says, which is the opposite of helpful. Joe probably can't afford to buy all Webster's drinks as well as her own, but like hell she wants random strangers thinking they can bribe their way into stealing Web's attention from her.

Webster laughs. “Well I’ve got cash anyway,” she says, “So I’m going to go get one and report back.”

She slips out of the booth and maybe it’s rude to Skinny but Joe can’t keep from following Webster with her eyes.

The costume certainly explains why Web had suddenly become so reticent about letting Joe mark her, even in places that nobody would normally see, because it leaves an ocean of Webster’s bare skin on show. A hickey would be suspicious when they’re still trying to keep their hook-ups discreet, but looking the way that a couple at the bar (strangers dressed recognisably as Harley and the Joker, even though the costumes are sloppily put together) are leering at Web as she approaches makes Joe wish she’d marked Webster anyway. She might not be able to publicly say that Webster was hers, but a few well-placed bite marks on her thighs would signal taken well enough.

“Oh, go loom possessively after her,” Skinny says, knocking back the remainder of her own drink and getting up. “I’m gonna find me some company who isn’t going to spend the whole evening planning the sex they’re gonna be having at the end of the night. Jesus, I can’t believe Web picked _that_...”

“Hey-” Joe tries to construct some sort of defence of herself, but the truth is Skinny’s accusation hits a little close to home, and by the time she’s thought of an argument Skinny has already slipped through the crowd towards where Joanne Toye has tucked herself away in a corner, dressed as a pirate for the fourth year running, now with the addition of a surprisingly realistic hook hand given the disdain for the holiday that her costume recycling suggests.

Resigning herself to her fate, Joe slugs back the last of her own drink and makes use of her elbows to cut through the crowd and join Webster at the bar.

She gets to Webster’s side and orders, but as she turns to Web she’s nearly hit in the face by Georgie Luz’s fairy wings and actually showered with glitter as Luz races by in a whirl of bright green dress and lopsided blonde wig. When Joe has stopped spluttering glitter and composed herself enough to look up at her, Webster is adjusting her top. "Problem?" she asks, taking a sip of the beer.

"Only that I'm starting to realise I’m going to spend half the night worried I'm going to fall right out of this damn thing,” Webster complains, “I probably should have worn something underneath but it made it look wrong."

Joe chokes.

It’s official - Webster is trying to kill her.

Once they have drinks Webster wants to socialize, which is the sort of normal reasonable behavior that Joe usually partook in at parties instead of just staring, but her mind has gone blank on every subject other than the way that Webster looks and how much Joe wants to tear that costume off Web with her teeth and so she mostly follows Webster around as she talks to her friends. She tries to keep Skinny’s words out of her ears but Joe knows deep down that her call out was accurate - Joe knows she shouldn’t but she can’t help glaring at anybody who stares at Webster for too long, keeping herself close to Web so that nobody else can invade her personal space. After a while though, she needs a smoke and it’s reason enough to quit what she shouldn’t have been doing anyway. She leaves Webster with the crowd of people watching Billie Guarnere standing on a chair and yelling about fuck knows what - it’s not even clear what she’s supposed to be dressed as, in a green tunic type shirt and leggings, plus a green hat with an orange feather in.

Once she’s out of the bar and breathing in the cold autumn air she finds her cravings diminished, leaves the cigarettes in her pocket and spends a few minutes just embracing the relative quiet after the noise of the bar.

Something flashes in past her gaze and hits her lightly on the chest, and she looks down to see a golden cord looped around her. She follows the cord to where it rests in a wide eyed Webster’s hands. “Did you just lasso me?”

Webster laughs, a little too loud like she might be feeling those last couple of drinks. “Wow… I really didn’t think that would work.”

“So you did just lasso me,” Joe declares, “Why di- hey, what are you doing?!” Webster is reeling in the cord, and the pull isn’t really tight enough to be uncomfortable, but Joe lets herself be tugged into Webster’s space anyway.

“I only read a few of the comics, but I’m pretty sure part of Wonder Woman’s job is not to let _criminals,_ ” she wraps a hand around Joe’s tie, pulling it out of the loop of the lasso and drawing Joe’s face close to her own, “escape.”

"I was just going for a smoke, not ditching," Joe says, then wants to kick herself because here Webster is basically initiating roleplay and, against anything she would have guessed, Joe's the one ruining it be being overly literal.

“You’re not smoking,” Web points out.

Joe shrugs. “Changed my mind.”

Web raises her brows. “So you are ditching?”

“No,” Joe says, “I’m just not smoking.”

“Shame,” Webster says, “I was kind of hoping you were ditching so I could follow you.”

“What, you’re not having a good time?” Joe asks.

“That suit... well it suits you,” Webster remarks, “But I still want to take it off you. Can’t really do that in the middle of bar.”

Joe doesn’t hesitate. “I lied. I’m ditching,” she declares, “You coming?”

“I hope so,” Webster says with a grin, and if that’s a fucking pun Joe is going to scream. “Let’s go.”

The bar everybody has picked for halloween is only a short walk from their dorm building and Joe doesn’t think she’s ever been more grateful for anything. She’s  lucky there’s not much traffic around because she’d pretty sure she’d have stepped right out in front of a truck before she managed to drag her eyes away from Webster to check if the roads are clear.

Web kisses her while Joe in fumbling with her keys, and it steals the last shreds of self control from her, she nearly turns an ankle on her way up the stairs because she can’t pull away from Webster long enough to mind her footing.

They crash into her room, but Joe is pretty sure everyone else is still out at parties and won’t mind the ruckus they’re making, she hopes the door has sealed properly upon swinging shut behind them but she’s not going to peel herself away from Webster to check.

The bed frame creaks ominously as they fall to it and Webster pulls back to catch her breath. Joe’s heart is racing but Webster seems content to take her time as she runs her fingers along the rope currently looped over Joe's shoulders like a loose scarf and rests one hand on the top rail of the headboard with a thoughtful look.

“If you’re my prisoner now...” Webster says, “Do I have to worry about you escaping?”

_Holy shit._

Joe swallows. “Maybe you should make sure I can’t.” She ducks out of the rope but then leans back against the pillows, settling her hands above her head so that her wrists lie close to the rail along the top of her headboard. Webster gathers up the dropped length of cord, bringing it to Joe’s wrists before hesitating.

“Joe... are you... I mean, you want...?”

“I want you to tie me up,” Joe says quickly, confident she hasn’t misunderstood what Webster was offering. “I... it’ll be...” If you had a vocabulary like Webster’s she might be able to find the words for what she’s thinking right now, that she hadn’t thought she could get more turned on than she’d been from the moment Webster had walked into the bar but now she feels like she’s burning up with it.

Webster nods once, taking a deep breath before she loops the surprisingly soft fabric around Joe’s wrists, keeping it loose enough that Joe could probably twist her hands out if she put a little effort into it, before knotting it carefully. “Okay?” Web asks, and Joe wriggles her hands a little, testing.

“Yeah, that feels okay,” she says, then nods to the headboard. “How do you want to do this?”

Webster frowns. “Are you sure it’s not too much? I mean…” she looks nervous, worried, and that’s no good for their game.

“Web, these beds are so cheaply made I’m pretty sure I could pull the headboard apart in a few good yanks if I needed to,” she makes a joke of it, but it’s also probably true. The previous year she’d managed to break six of the base slats over the course of the year, and had a hell of a time proving it was the fault of construction not her misuse in order to get her deposit back.

Webster nods, looking reassured, and wraps the other end of the cord around the bed frame. Joe can’t see the knot she’s used but it feels secure enough when she gives it a testing pull and then Webster is leaning into to kiss her, slow and soft with a note of tentativeness that Joe has never felt from her before.

“What should I...?” Webster says when she pulls back, “Tell me what you want, Joe."

Joe isn't sure how much Webster has learned about the canon, that it's a lasso of truth and, depending on the writer, obedience. Joe had always considered truth to be a pretty underwhelming superpower, but in Web's hands, when Joe is holding back so much, it suddenly feels incredibly dangerous.

"You," Joe confesses, and she means to say more but there's already too much weight behind that one word, she feels like she's given herself away, and surely Webster is going to see that Joe doesn't just want her right now, doesn't just mean in bed or as a hook-up or even as a friend, Joe wants everything.

"I know," Webster says, oddly soft. There's a look on her face that Joe can't describe, as she brushes her fingertips across Joe's cheek. "I l-"

There's a crash and a shriek from outside and Webster glances towards the door. "I'm a'right," hollers a philly-accented voice, which means not their problem, even though it's followed by an, "Ow. God-damn!"

Webster turns back to Joe, and the mysterious look is gone, replaced by exasperation.

"Pretty sure I recall wonder woman as being all about rescuing innocent civilians, not judging them," Joe teases. "Shouldn't you be rushing off to the rescue?"

"I'm pretty what Heffron wants is Jean Roe in her nurse’s outfit, not me," Webster retorts, "And anyway, I'd never risk you getting away from me."

"I didn't see Roe at the party, or anyone in a nurse costume," Joe says, momentarily distracted. Admittedly she didn't see much of anything after Webster walked in, she'd been too busy trying to memorize every detail of Webster in that costume, fulfilling a fantasy Joe hadn't even realised she had.

"Oh, I didn't mean a costume, I just meant her usual scrubs," Webster says. "Haven’t you noticed Babe's turning into a hypochondriac looking for excuses to go hang out at campus health? But that's not the point." Webster places her hands on Joe's thighs. "I've got you and you can't escape, so you're mine now."

Oh, game on. "Do your worst.”

Webster kisses Joe, languid, unknotting Joe’s tie like they have all the time in the world, before sliding down to kiss Joe’s neck. She unfastens Joe shirt slowly, stopping to kiss the skin unveiled after each button is undone, spreading Joe’s shirt open an inch at time and exploring the flesh revealed, lingering on the slight curve of her breasts, the sensitive spot at the bottom of her ribs that Joe had always called ticklish until the first time Webster had put her mouth there and it became, “Yes, please… more…”.

When Joe’s torso is finally bared Web unbuckles Joe’s belt, slipping down Joe’s body and tugging her trousers and shorts down her legs until they she can toss them to the floor, then Web presses her lips just above the jut of Joe’s ankle and being dotting light kisses up her calves. She slows as she rises, by the time she’s past Joe’s knees every press of her mouth is seems to take an age, as she bites and sucks and leaves marks that she presses her fingers to as she moves on. When she reaches the tops of Joe’s spread thighs, Joe is writhing, panting, but Webster just slips sideways, following Joe’s hipbones up and leaving Joe twisting and tugging her bound wrists in desperation.

Webster's knots aren't that good, but it doesn't matter because it's impossible for Joe to focus on getting loose when Webster's pressing kisses to her hips and massaging her thighs, so close to where Joe wants her.

"...please," Joe groans, and apparently begging is what Webster was waiting for, because finally, _finally,_ Webster’s mouth is where Joe needs it to be.

Web knows Joe inside out these days, knows exactly how to lick and suck to bring Joe crashing to completion  but also how to kiss and tease and keep Joe balanced right on the brink of satisfaction and begging for more, and Joe never knows if she loves or hates the way Web plays her with ease.

Webster is working hard and fast tonight, no need for games when she already has Joe begging,

Joe hadn’t expected to mind so much that her hands were bound but now that can’t she realises how much she appreciates getting her hands in Webster’s hair, the sense of control it gives her even when she’s powerless to do anything but give under Webster’s touch. She’s over the edge in minutes, bound wrists straining at the ties as she curls towards Webster but Web doesn’t seem interested in stopping, tongue sliding into her until Joe is shaking.

“Web... Web stop,” she gasps.

Even though she’s asked for it she still can’t help feeling frustrated when Webster lifts her head. Joe wants her to keep going, it’s just that she also wants more.

“Joe?” Webster says, sitting up and reaching for the rope.

“No, not that. I’m fine, I’m fine.” After waiting so long at the party, one orgasm is barely enough to take the edge off of Joe's lust, and she'd never even try to deny that the costume is working for her on all sorts of levels, but she also desperately wants Webster undressed and she says so.

Webster slips off the bed, stretching before she reaches behind her, arching her back a little to get to the fasteners of the bodice and seeming to struggle with it for a moment before it falls away, leaving her torso bare except for a smattering of faint pink marks where the costume must have dug into her skin. She turns away then, carrying the bodice across the room to place neatly on the chair. Joe would complain, she really doesn't care about keeping things neat, except for that it means she gets an unobscured view of Webster's ass as she leans over to slowly slide the shorts down the length of her legs, before placing them on the chair too.

There's colour high in her cheeks as she turns back around and she's biting her lip a little. As she walks back over Joe lets out a low whistle, just in case her grin isn't making it obvious enough that she's enjoying the show Web is putting on for her, and in response Webster’s gait shifts to a saunter.

Webster keeps the boots on as she climbs back onto the bed, which Joe is certain annoys her to do, but Joe appreciates it. Between the boots, the bracelets and the tiara, Webster still looks like wonder woman while also being gloriously naked. It's possibly the hottest thing Joe has ever seen and she honestly isn't sure life could get much better than this.

Webster crawls up the bed until she's straddling Joe, close enough that Joe can feel the heat of her but never touching. "You're under my control Lieb, I could make you do anything I want," she whispers, low and husky, sending shivers through Joe, "But I’m going to be merciful."

She straightens then, settling until she rests on Joe's thighs. The point of contact is wonderful, but the rest of her is too far away, and Joe isn’t sure how this is supposed to be merciful, especially when Webster reaches up to cup her breasts in her hands and says, “I'm not going to touch you. It would be wrong to take advantage of a prisoner," and her right hand is slipping down from her breast, to her waist and then across a hip to dip between her thighs, "I'll have to take care of myself." And this isn't mercy, Joe thinks, it's torture.

Webster's thumb keeps pressing down on that lonely bruise on her chest, and there is nothing in the world that Joe wants more then be able to get her mouth on Webster and add more marks to accompany it, especially since she now suspects Webster's sudden caginess about Joe leaving bruises was because the costume displayed areas that usually only Joe got to see, rather than any of the things Joe feared.

The only distraction she has is Webster's other hand, the way she moves her palm in small circles against her clit and Joe can hear how wet she is, the slick noise of her fingers working in and out as she makes herself gasp and moan.

Joe tries to roll her hips but with Webster's weight pinning her legs she can't move to any good position and the frustration is unbearable. Her body might be trapped and her hands tied but Joe still has one weapon left to her, so she opens her mouth.

"You want to torture a confession out of me? Want me to tell you how bad I've been? Because I have. I've been thinking about you all night, wanting to drag you into a bathroom and go down on you till you scream."

Webster's hips hitch and her breath stutters as her fingers move faster.

"You like that?" Joe says, "Wanna get my mouth on you, it'll be better than your fingers I promise.” She grins. “It's not breaking your rules really, not you touching me. All you gotta do is let me."

Webster shakes her head. But her eyes are on Joe's lips and Joe knows she can convince Webster to stop this goddamn tease.

"You looked so hot tonight, I swear everybody in that goddamn bar checked you out at least once. Made me want to steal you away, keep you somewhere nobody could touch you but me. I know you want that, you picked that costume just for me,” she says, because why else would Webster have picked it, she’s not even tried to hide it; but Webster’s nod still sends a complicated mix of desperate lust and aching affection through her. Web had _planned_ this, had to have been thinking about it for weeks, arranging this for Joe’s sake. “I... Web, I need you,” the distance between them is killing her.

Webster drops the hand from her breast to reach down and caress Joe’s jaw, such a touch that still sets Joe aflame and has her turning her head in to Webster’s grasp. Webster shifts from straddling Joe's legs, moving until she's pushing one of her thighs between Joe's own, braced above her as she leans down to kiss Joe. The position lets Joe hook a leg around Webster, drawing her closer as Joe grinds down on her thigh. The friction isn't great but Joe is too worked up to care, especially when Web is rubbing off against her hip with desperate thrusts as they kiss. It’s messy and frantic, neither of them pretending towards elegance or technique as they race towards mutual satisfaction, close enough that Joe can’t tell who finds that edge first, only that Webster is moaning urgently against her lips as pleasure crashes over her not like waves but a landslide.

Webster collapses down on top of her when they’re both done and even then Joe thrills at the way they’re pressed together, letting the echoes of pleasure resonate through her as they lay together, mouths locked and bodies intertwined.

Eventually they have to break apart, and while the angle of Joe’s arms causes her no discomfort it’s not a natural one and she’s over the thrill of her bound hands and eager to touch, so when the lust has cleared from Webster’s gaze a little, she says, “Untie me,” and Webster hastens to obey.

Web fumbles with her knots, fingers uncoordinated and  ends up leaning over Joe to tug them loose with her teeth and even in her present state Joe can’t resist the temptation to lift her head and press kisses against her chest. As soon as her hands are free she tangles them in Webster’s hair, finally sending the already askew tiara tumbling from her locks to the floor, and leaning up a little further and scraping her teeth lightly along Webster’s collarbone and Webster gasps, “Yes, Lieb please,” and when Joe bites down she moans, arching as she says, “Missed this… I didn’t want so many marks in the costume but I couldn’t let that last one fade, didn’t want to not have _any_.”

Joe had thought herself fatigued but the suggestion of Webster wanting her marks, welcoming them, electrifies her so that she’s rolling the both over until she’s the one leaning over Webster and ready to to mark her however much she wants.

Halloween is Joe's new favourite day of the year.

 

***

 

The cold weather becomes a constant in November. It’s drier than back home, but the winds are harsher and too many of the campus buildings were built high and tightly packed so the gusts get trapped between them,  whipping around corners and and sending leaves whirling up in vicious flurries.

Joe layers up shirts and hoodies and jackets while Webster seems to have a different coat for every day of the week, each with matching accessories. Honestly Joe doesn’t know how she fits her seemingly endless wardrobe into her tiny dorm room.

They’re huddled under Webster’s umbrella as they cross between the dining hall and the dorm when Joe sneezes and Webster purses her lips.

“No,” Joe says, preemptively.

“I didn’t do anything!” Webster protests.

“You were about to.” Joe knows that look, it’s the same look that Webster gets whenever she feels Joe isn’t dressed for the weather. It’s a look Joe’s mother would approve of, and one that has resulted in Joe needing to return three of Webster’s scarves and two knit caps over the last two weeks because Webster has swooped over when they’ve been passing one another on campus and wrapped her own body-warm scarf around Joe’s neck, or deposited her hat on Joe’s head with a quick comment about how her long hair meant she was far better insulated than Joe.

If she’s so well insulated, Joe can’t help but think, why does she own so many scarves in the first place?

“I’m not cold, it’s just this fucking wind,” she complains, leaning closer into Webster’s side. “I’m surprised your umbrella hasn’t flipped inside out yet.”

Webster smiles. “Guess I’m just lucky.”

 

***

 

Movies have kind of become her and Webster’s thing, but it’s not an exclusive thing and there are always going to be areas where their tastes are fundamentally incompatible, so one Friday night in late November finds Joe walking out of the cinema with Rob Smith from her computing class, as he gleefully but unnecessarily rehashes everything they’d just seen on screen in lurid detail.

They’ve stopped to wait for the lights to change at the crossing on the high street when then suddenly he’s leaning in, so close that Joe can feel the brush of his facial hair and, oh hell no.

She shoves him away and steps back in disgust. “What the fuck, bro?”

“I… what… I was just trying to kiss you. That’s what people do on dates.”

Joe gawps at him. “How fucking drunk are you right now?” He’s not even slurring but she can’t believe the bullshit she’s hearing. “Date?”

He looks at her askance. “No shit, it was a date. You, me, dinner and a movie, what else did you think it was?”

Joe raises her eyebrows. “Okay, firstly, Subway does not count as dinner - who raised you? And secondly, of course it wasn’t a date. Do you need me to put it in Tarzan speak for you? You, dude; me, lesbian. I figured you wanted to hang, go see a movie that’s probably too gory for most people, not that you were making some sort of weird move on me.”

He raises his hands in surrender. “Okay, so I misread this. I wasn’t trying to be creepy. I mean I knew you were into girls, but I figured you might go both ways or whatever, and you’re single… you are single right? I haven’t just hit epic levels of douchebaggery and made a move on somebody who’s spoken for have I?”

Joe hesitates. On one hand, she isn’t technically taken, hasn’t even talked about exclusivity with Webster, but she’d hardly say she wasn’t in a relationship, even without Joe’s feelings, a friends with benefits arrangement that’s gone on so long as theirs surely counts for something.  And she wants to be able to say she's with Webster. "I'm not," she says, but then he looks so ashamed that she confesses, "But it's complicated, you couldn't have known."

Smitty nods. “Well... I‘m just gonna... leave... now,” he says, and Joe nods.

“Yeah, you should go.”

Joe’s still reeling as she makes her way back towards her dorm building, and god it’s such a relief to see Webster making her way up the steps. Right now Joe just needs some sanity.

“You would not believe what just happened to me,” she calls out.

Webster pauses, turns to Joe and raises her eyebrows. “Are you alright, you look a little... lost?”

“Apparently Smitty thought I was on a date with him,” Joe confesses. “He tried to kiss me.”

Webster’s eyes widen. “He what? Did you…?”

“Ew no,” Joe says, surprised Web would even need to ask. “I told him to knock it off, of course.”

“Right,” Webster says, then laughs. “I mean... obviously, I just... did he really think you were on a date?”

Joe shrugs, following her up the steps and into the building. “Apparently eating food and seeing a movie is automatically a date in his mind,” she says. “Clearly he doesn’t get out much with his friends.”

“But you were going to see one of those awful torture movies,” Webster says as they cross the hall, and Joe can’t help but laugh at how she wrinkles her nose at the mere mention of them. “It hardly sets a romantic mood.”

“I dunno,” Joe says. “I don’t think he’d know a romantic mood if it jumped up and bit his dick off but horror is a date genre - it’s an excuse to get close in the back row.”

“You’ve never struck me as the type to need an excuse,” Webster says.

Joe turns at the top of the stairs, on the verge of pointing out that the excuse would mostly be for Webster’s benefit when she's cut off by Web's lips pressing up against hers.

It’s a hard kiss, Webster’s mouth demanding as she grabs Joe’s arms and when she pulls  back there’s fire in her eyes as she says, “You don’t need to be in the back row of a movie theatre.”

"Uh, we're still in the hallway," Joe points out, because they are but if Webster keeps looking at her like that she’s not sure she is going to care in a moment.

Web shifts her grip to Joe’s wrist tugging her down the hall until they’re at Joe’s door.

“Who did he think he was?” Webster bitches as she pushes Joe inside. Fuck but Webster looks good when she’s angry.

“Nothing compared to you,” Joe blurts out, and the way Webster licks her lips suggests that’s exactly the right answer.

 

***

 

Joe wakes up in the best way, tangled up in blankets with Webster pressing kisses down the side of her neck. They both fool around for a while before Webster finally breaks it off claiming the need for a shower and it’s not until she’s back and they’re both getting dressed that Joe realises why Webster kept bringing her mouth back to the same few spots when she catches sight of her reflection in the mirror. More specifically the string of hickeys that starts at her collarbone and works it's way up her neck, not stopping until it hits the underside of her jaw. She reaches up, tracing the edges with her fingertips.

In the mirror she sees Webster ducking her head. "Sorry," she says, "I... Uh... Went a little overboard last night..."

Joe shakes her head. It's going to be impossible to cover, but whatever sideways looks or nosey questions it brings seem like a good trade off for last night and the memory of Webster kissing her way up Joe’s chest, closing her lips around the tender skin of Joe’s throat and then following with teeth. "It's fine," she says. "A bit of a surprise, but a good surprise."

"Still, I didn't mean to go all caveman on you. I know you weren’t interested in him and anyway I trust you, it just..." Webster runs her hands through her hair. "Just to be clear... I haven't slept with anyone else since that first time with you, I figure..."

Webster trails off and leaves Joe’s heart hanging in her throat. "You figure what?"

"I know you don't like putting labels on things, but... you... I…" Webster shakes her head, and Joe thinks maybe she ought to cut but she’s silenced by how strange it is to see Web struggling for words when they're normally her element. "Were you… was this the only time this happened or have you... has there been anybody else?"

The laughter that escapes Joe is bitter. Wouldn’t it be nice for her to have been able to shrug Webster off like that, instead of spending months wallowing in her hopeless feelings. “Seriously?” she asks, because even Webster can’t have been wholly oblivious to the way she’s pushed herself to the centre of Joe’s life, but then something else catches up with her. “Wait... You weren’t with anybody else? Just me? This whole time we've been hooking-up...” It doesn’t sound plausible, maybe she’d been too busy during term time, but she hadn’t spent every night of the summer talking to Joe, just most, and Joe hadn’t been willing to delude herself as to who else Web might have been spending her time with. Hadn’t been willing to hope that Webster was with nobody else when there was even the slimmest chances of those hopes being wrong. “I mean, you and me, we’re- we’ve always been just casual..."

“Oh.”

“...I mean we have fun and that’s great and it’s chill, I never expected-” never dreamed “-that you-”

"Yeah, no. I mean... cool,” Webster says with an abrupt wave of her hand. “I've just been so busy and... well I’m even busy right now. I have to go and it’s... there’s an essay thing for literature."

“Oh, sure,” Joe says, that would certainly explain why Webster had abandoned the possibility of more sex in favour of showering alone. She reaches down to grab Webster’s sweater from the floor beside her but by the time she’s sitting up again Web is already out the door.

It’s likely for the best, she muses, because if they’d talked much longer about monogamy -however accidental- Joe’s not sure she’d be able to properly conceal how much she craved it and the jealousy that had simmered through her every time she thought of Webster getting close with somebody else.  Knowing that she hasn’t is simultaneously a relief and a nightmare because if Joe had her way then things would continue like that, but she can’t begin to conceive how she could ask for it without revealing just how deeply she’s fallen and how much she’d ask for if there was a chance she could have it without destroying what was already between them.

She’s trying to decide if she should get a head start on her next round of essays since apparently Web is gonna be busy all day when the door slams open so hard the room rattles.

At no point in the last four years had Joe ever seen Skinny get angry. She just isn’t the type. Skinny gets bitchy, gets sulky, gets frustrated, but she's never really flipped her lid.

Until now.

She looks furious as she walks into the room and Joe is sort of fascinated, right until Skinny opens her mouth and says, “I said I was staying out of this but things have gone too far. What did you do and why _the fuck_ is Webster crying?"

Joe's whole insides go ice-cold.

There’s obviously been some misunderstanding because Webster doesn’t cry, the biggest emotional response Joe had even seen from her was getting slightly misty eyed watching Marley and Me. Nothing should be making Webster cry, ever.

"But I didn't... crying? Are you sure that’s what you saw?” she asks, and holy shit if Skinny glared at her any harder she’d be dead already. “Okay, okay, but it’s nothing to do with me,” she says, she’s got no idea what would even make Webster cry, let alone how it could have happened in the few minutes since her departure. A phone-call maybe?

"Oh really?” Skinny says, leaning into Joe’s space threateningly, “Because I tried to ask her what happened and the only thing I could get out of her before she ran off was _your name_."

Joe swallows. "I... we were talking and she mentioned she hadn't been hooking-up with anybody else, and I guess I was surprised, but I..." Could Webster had thought there was malice in Joe's surprise that Webster wasn't fucking anyone else? That Joe was judging her, or something? But surely Webster isn't so sensitive as to cry about that.

Skinny’s jaw drops. "You were surprised that your girlfriend wasn't cheating on you? What the fuck, Joe!"

"She's not my girlfriend," Joe reminds her. Skinny is one of the few people she’s accepted that this can’t be concealed from and therefore she of all people ought to know better. "I've told you before, it was- is just sex."

Skinny grabs Joe, "Did you say that to her?!"

"No, I…” Joe hesitates. She’d said casual, and a real casual relationship probably would be just sex with no room for all the quiet moments of comfort she and Web have shared. “Well... I guess that was the gist, yeah."

For a moment Joe really thinks Skinny is about to hit her. Then she steps back and shakes her head, taking a deep breath. "Joe, do you want her to be your girlfriend?"

Of course. "Of course, but..."

"No buts. You need to find her and tell her that." Joe opens her mouth to disagree, she's not sure what Webster is so upset about but this definitely isn't the moment to push Joe's terrible infatuation on her. "No, don't argue Joe. Jesus, she's in love with you, you idiot! She had this stupid crush on you for ages and then you guys started hooking-up but pretending you weren’t and I'm pretty sure everyone who figured it out warned her she was just going to get hurt, but instead you were interested back-"

"What?" Webster having had a crush on her? When could that even have been? Joe was pretty sure Webster didn't even really like her up until they'd been hooking up for a while, and other than Skinny Joe had told nobody about their hook-ups and Webster hadn’t seemed inclined to share either, so who the hell were everybody in this scenario? And did Skinny just say _love_?! “You’re not making any sense!”

Skinny is still talking though. "And nobody really knew what was going on with you guys but then after the summer you were clearly together and everybody thought it was just a matter of time until you stopped being sarcastic about your feelings and you guys made it official in public.” Skinny shakes her head and sighs. “She was so obvious about you, and you were obvious right back, but you never seemed to be comfortable with admitting to a serious relationship, and now you're telling me you told her you were just screwing her? And also some other people on the side?!"

"I never even looked at anyone else!" Joe protests. Every word out of Skinny's mouth sounds like madness. But if there's even the even the slightest chance she's telling the truth... "Where did she go?"

"I mean how could you think- huh?"

"You said she ran off," it's Joe's turn to get in Skinny's face now, "Where. Was. She. Going?"

Skinny takes a step back. “I don’t know. She turned right when she left the building, but that could be like half the campus.”

Right. Right, right, right. Joe tries to visualise the campus. Where would Webster go to deal with her feelings if not back to her own room.

The library is in that direction, but also it’s one of her favoured places Joe can’t imagine Webster picking somewhere so public or so likely to disturb other students. Even when she was at wits end with her studying Web would always slip outside to the old smoking benches that students had used until the university had begrudging installed a proper smoking shelter in order to constrain the littering. Webster likes to pretend she’s not a stress smoker, but Joe has caught her at it far too many times to not know that she falls right back to the habit when things are going badly.

“Joe!” Skinny says as Joe pushes past her. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“No,” Joe admits. “But I’m going to find out.”

 

***

 

Skinny wasn't lying.

Just as Joe suspected, Webster is sitting hunched on the benches a few yards from the library. She’s not smoking though. Her eyes are bloodshot and her cheeks are damp, not crying right now but it's obvious she's only recently stopped. Her nose is running a little and she scrubs a napkin roughly across her face. She looks _awful._ “J-Joe…”

“Thought you were going to do an essay,” Joe says, walking over to join her on the bench. Close up Joe can see that her hands are trembling and she has to be freezing out in this weather in just her thin dress, sweater left behind on Joe's desk. Joe aches to wrap her arms around her, but none of this makes sense.

“I… I was just...”

It’s clear that there’s no easy lie coming to mind for Webster so Joe cuts to the chase. "Skinny says you're in love with me and I should have realised."

Webster scowls but she still looks more sad than angry. "Skinny should shut-"

"I think that's bullshit," Joe continues. "I'm crazy about you - I would have noticed you being in love with me.”

Webster's response is a hiccupping scoff. "Joe, you walked into a door the other week because you didn't notice it wasn't automatic."

Joe remembers, the way the wind had whipped the escaped loose strands Webster’s hair into a halo, put a flush in her cheeks as she’d enthused about her class – Joe hadn’t missed that the door wasn’t automatic, she hadn’t realised they were approaching a door at all – and it had hurt like a bitch, she’d had a hint of bruise on her cheek the next day, but it had almost been worth it for the way Webster had fussed over her plight, while simultaneously fighting back giggles at its cause. "I didn't see the door because I was looking at you. Because I never stop thinking about you and whenever you're around I can barely focus on anything else. You’re the only one I’ve been looking at for… for far too long.”

From the way Webster is staring at her, maybe Joe’s infatuation was never so obvious as she’d thought it.

“I think I was already going mad over you within weeks of that first time you kissed me,” she admits. “But… I couldn’t make sense of you. You kept coming around, you always seemed to be having a good time, then you’d be so distant and embarrassed of me when we weren't in private.”

"I wasn't...” Webster cuts in, “God Joe, how could anybody be embarrassed about you? I was embarrassed about me because I was supposed to be getting you out of my system, but I just kept digging myself deeper and wanting you more, even though everyone had warned me not to do that to myself.”

"Wanting me _more_? That makes it sound like..."

Webster shakes her head and the look on her face would be irritatingly patronising were it not for the fact she still looks on the verge of tears. "Really Joe, why did you think I kissed you that night?”

Joe hadn't been thinking about that, not really. All she can remember from the build-up was how frustrated Webster had been, so worked up over a stupid movie, and how funny it was to push her buttons. And then Webster had kissed her and Joe had stopped paying attention to anything else. An impulse decision that had turned into the sort of sex that would have anybody coming back for more. “I…” Joe shakes her head, “I know what I thought, but now I think I’d judged things all wrong. I know what I want; and I thought I knew what you wanted, and now I know what Skinny says you want, but none of that makes sense together. Just… I don’t…” Joe reaches out, bridges the gap between them to grab Webster’s hand, entwining Webster’s icy fingers with her own. “Talk to me Webster. No bullshit, no deflections. Just lay it on me, because I’d give you anything you asked for but you’ve gotta ask, ‘cause I’m lost.”

“No bullshit, no deflections…” Webster echoes. For a moment she falls silent, looking down at their clasped hands. “…I’m in love with you.”

“Web…” Joe breathes, and Webster looks up, meeting her gaze head on for the first time.

“I… I’d wanted you for a long time when I kissed you that night, you drove me crazy with your hair and your stupid skinny jeans and all of your smart comments about everything and the smirking. I was just so frustrated with you. I convinced myself maybe, maybe if I could have you, just once, just for a little while, it would get easier, that you wouldn’t be so interesting then. Which was a total lie, and I knew it. And then you suggested watching more movies, and I knew I ought to say no, but I just couldn’t resist you, and you kissed me, and I told myself that I could be fine with just whatever you offered, even if I wanted more, so I kept coming back. I wanted to stop having a crush on you, and I guess I got that, though in the opposite way from what I’d intended. And then,” her voice wavers, “Over the summer I got stupid.”

Joe squeezes her hand, remembering the way her own heart had gone into overdrive during those long late night calls, “Well we’ve got that in common.”

“I suppose I wanted you to be mine so badly I started to convince myself it was true. You said that we were good together and I figured we had an understanding, that maybe we didn’t talk about it but that… well, I couldn’t… I can’t imagine how you could fail to see how I felt about you, not when everyone else knew and… I don’t know, I thought we were something even if we never spoke about it, that maybe you were starting to feel the same about me and it was just, you never liked other people’s PDA and you always call the romantic moments in movies stupid so I though you just wanted to avoid making a big deal of it. It was... I was stupid.”

“Web, I was,” Joe says, because Webster is still talking like there’s some question about where Joe stands with her, “I am. I love you.”

“No,” Webster says, and Joe’s heart drops into her stomach like lead as Webster tugs her hand free of Joe’s. “No, Joe, it’s fine. You said yourself, we were just casual… I’m not trying to,” she reaches up and scrubs at her teary eyes with her palm, “This isn’t a guilt trip, you don’t have to… you don’t.”

And she’s standing up now, turning away, and god but how have they misunderstood each other so badly? “Web… Webster…” and Joe’s no good with words, has given Webster all of the best ones she has already, but this can’t be the end of them, not like this. “You thought I felt the same way before I told you otherwise and you weren’t wrong. If you can’t believe me saying I do, believe all the things that made you think I did. I…” and shit, she can feel tears welling in her eyes, because of course more crying is exactly what this conversation needs, “Web… please. I said I’d give you anything you asked for, and I thought casual was what you wanted, so that’s what I said, what I gave you, but I-,” and she chokes on a sob but Webster is turning back to her.

“You didn’t mean it?” Webster says, voice soft, every word fragile as if there could be no greater risk than daring to speak them.

Joe spreads her arms, can only be honest. “Does this… Do I look casual to you?” and her voice shakes a little, but Webster’s mouth curves upward into a weak, trembling smile, and then she’s stepping forward into Joe’s arms and turning her pleading question into an embrace.

Joe has wanted so long to hold her, without reservation or the knowledge that she was dooming herself, that she feels like she might start to cry again. She turns her head, meaning to press her face against Webster’s neck to cover how little control she has over her expressions and then flinches back. “You’re practically an ice-block!” she says. It’s late November and there’s nothing but grey clouds in the sky, and strong breeze blowing, and Webster is practically hypothermic.

Web looks startled, like she’s not been paying attention to the cold, “I... Lieb…”

Joe groans. “It kills me every time you call me that,” she confesses, “My mother was Austrian, I grew up speaking German, and when you say that it sounds like…”

Webster kisses her, whispers against her lips, “Ich liebe dich, Liebling. I meant it every time.”


End file.
